


All That Remains Is Smoke

by HowILearnedToLoveTheBomb



Series: As A Whole [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula (Avatar)-centric, F/F, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Past Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowILearnedToLoveTheBomb/pseuds/HowILearnedToLoveTheBomb
Summary: Stripped of all that she has ever known, Azula struggles against herself and against circumstance to find new meaning. Post-war Azula Alone style redemption.Mainly deals with Azula's escape from the asylum and her journey across the Fire Nation, but with retrospective slow burn thrown in.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Series: As A Whole [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906822
Comments: 93
Kudos: 317





	1. The Great Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is mention of self harm and vomiting.

It was nearing midday in the early Spring. The fields were busier than usual, as the farmers had recruited boys and young men from the village to assist with the seasonal burning of harvested fields. Closest to the dirt road leading to the village was a field which had contained garlic chives, now gently smoking from that morning’s burn. The workers barely glanced at the passers by, eager as they were to finish for the day. One such passer by paused, pouring water over her sugegasa with the hope it would cool her brow. Beneath the hat was rich black hair, that, once luscious, was cut rather brutally to shoulder length. The crown was particularly short, and perhaps this was why she donned the sugegasa, rather than draw it back into a customary bun. Before continuing on her way she took a moment to breathe in deeply as if the smoke from the smouldering fields were incense. She considered the field with watchful golden eyes. This was one of the more prosperous farms, being able to hire so many fire benders that they were content to conduct a controlled burn on such a warm day. Many young fire benders had been conscripted in the days of the war against the other nations, and few had returned to their humble towns and villages now the war had ended. As such, skilled agricultural bending, the controlled burns, was too much of an expense for small farming lots. Untrained or under-aged benders were hired cheaply by smaller peasant farmers in an attempt to save face and project prosperity, but rarely could they guide or smother the flames any better than a non-bender.

Any fool can start an inferno. Few can contain it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azula’s great escape from Setting Sun Asylum several months earlier was precipitated by a moment of pity, or terrible guilt, from Fire Lord Zuko. The period following her defeat in the Agni Kai had been the darkest in her life. She oscillated between tremendous fits of fury, lashing out at the attendant and their poison concoctions that blunted her senses, and episodes in which she felt she was held in time, limbs icy cold and breathless, unable to be roused for hours at a time. For perhaps the first time in her life, her demands went unheeded, brushed off with a smile, sometimes kind, sometimes mocking. With dawning horror, Azula realised that the Fire Lord and his allies intended to keep her here indefinitely. 

_Azula stood stiffly by a window, fixing her eyes on the garden below. Trying to keep her voice even she shot a look at the plump attendant overseeing her._

_“Where is Zuko? If I am to spend my days here on his orders I would hope he would at least tell me this himself.”_

_The second statement came out like the whine of a child. She gritted her teeth and exhaled deeply._

_“The Fire Lord is very busy, Princess. I’m sure he will visit soon,” she replied, with a pitying tilt of her head._

_It was more than Azula could take. She was by her side in an instant, and hand to the attendant’s neck, the other burning blue aflame._

_“Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know what I can do? You can’t keep me locked up here!” she cried, not knowing if she was saying this to Zuko, to her father, or the poor woman before her. Her palm scorched the wall besides the attendant’s head, but her grip had already slackened when the wardsmen tore her away._

The ice baths became more frequent, and her arms were regularly bound. Her anger turned to quiet fear, and she retreated within herself. When Zuko announced himself in the doorway, he was evidently startled by the state of his sister. Dark circles around her eyes and unkempt hair, he was most disturbed to see the hand-shaped burns lining her arms. She was thin, the firm muscle of her arms and legs gone. She was restricted to indoor areas of the asylum, but increasingly refused to leave her private quarters. The curtains of her room were drawn closed, and from her sallow complexion it was clear she had not seen the sun for some time.

He demanded she be given supervised visits to the gardens, albeit on the condition she be restrained not with leather and steel, but with bitter medicine which slowed her movement and her thoughts. These visits proved beneficial. The medicine made her sluggish and uncoordinated, so she took to sitting, no, basking in the sun. She could not bend well while in this state, but she could breathe. She timed each breath, slowing or quickening her pulse at will. This small measure of discipline cut through the fog of her despair. Zuzu you fool.

Demands and threats would not endear her to her Setting Sun keepers. In her lucid moments she tried a different approach. Disgruntled compliance. Despite the indignity of swallowing down bitter tonics, being shepherded and watched wherever she went, and even the frigid ice baths which so reminded her of her wretched defeat at the hands of the water tribe girl, the burning sun above fueled whatever hope she had of leaving this place. This was enough to cut through the doubts the figures that haunted her sowed. What did it matter if Zuko locked her away if she could find a way out?

On the day of her escape, she grimaced as the slowing tonic went down her throat. She showed the attendant her empty mouth and the leather that bound her arms was removed. Azula crossed her arms.

“I had a thought I might like to meditate with incense today.” She said it carelessly, but shot the attendant a look tinged with desperation. Her attendant, an older, stern looking woman considered for a moment, before nodding.

“I will return shortly with the incense. But I’m locking this door.”

Azula gave a slight nod, her relief barely betrayed by her face, as the woman closed the door to her room. When sure the woman was out of earshot Azula quickly ran to her bed. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she purged herself of the bitter tonic onto the bedsheets and quickly tucked them under the soft throw she slept under. Turning to the window she composed her face into her best bored expression, trying to ignore the foul aftertaste on her tongue. Already, the small amount of tonic she had been unable to purge had begun to affect her. She exaggerated the droop of her shoulders and affected a slight sway as her attendant returned.

Azula allowed the attendant to clasp her arm as they walked slowly to the gardens. Together they did a circuit along the wall of the garden before she sat Azula down on the raised slate tiles she preferred to meditate on. Once Azula was settled, the attendant placed the incense before her. She looked expectantly at the Princess. Azula feigned unsteadiness in her hand as she reached to light the incense between her fingers. When she indicated she had failed to set them aflame, she looked away with downcast eyes, the picture of shame. Azula ignored the pursed lips of the attendant, who lit the incense with spark rocks, and shut her eyes.

She focused on the breath, and the warmth of the sun on her skin. The tonic was strong, and although she had purged it almost immediately it still left a faint haze in her mind. Instead of fighting the haze, she imagined it as the soft sandalwood that was burning before her. She pictured the smoke entering her lungs, and spread from there until her whole body was full of its sweet scent. Her face softened. It was as if the smoke were now seeping from her pores, clinging to her fingertips. She rejoiced in the sun, the heat, and the smoke. Like a leaf, unable to be sustained by a dying tree, she imagined herself dry in the sun, until at last she would burst into flame. With each intake of air, she generated heat that swept from her stomach to her lungs to the tips of her fingers and toes. NOW!

Her eyes snapped open, clear and gold. With a single movement she stood and ran to the wall several strides before her. Before the wardsmen could grasp her wrists she lept toward the wall, and at the same time bent a bright blue fire whirl from both her feet, propelling her forward. She was just able to cling to the top of the wall and drag herself over. The tonic made her clumsy but she rolled and fell heavily to the ground below. Not losing any time, Azula clambered to her feet, her eyes flashing. Praying her legs would not collapse beneath her, she vaulted forward. And like that, Azula disappeared into the cover of the trees as the alarmed cries coming from the Setting Sun rang in her ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed. My first fic, so please let me know what you think. This may become part of a larger series all about Azula. There will be f/f so stay tuned. Find me on tumblr @azuwulastan


	2. The Pursuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula flees those who haunt her

Once she had put enough distance between her and the Asylum that she could not hear the commotion caused by her escape, Azula slowed to a fast pace. Better to outendure her hunters than to outpace them. Although she had lost considerable fitness in the months she had been imprisoned, Azula was a creature of the hunt, and therefore knew how to cover her tracks. What could have better trained her for this than the year she spent searching for Zuko, her Uncle, and the Avatar himself?

The Asylum was near a naval base, on a peninsula south of The Capital. Azula was certain the Asylum would inform them of her escape first. The soldiers then would likely pursue her on the back of mongoose lizards, as they were excellent trackers and could traverse all kinds of terrain. She had to lose their scent. 

Never had she walked so far, in such a condition, through such terrain: jagged rocks that had been thrown from the mouth of the volcano lay covered in moss, old growth forest with twisting vines and ferns, and wide empty river beds that no doubt coursed with water during the wet season lay in her path. In the past she always had the luxury of a mount or a vehicle, or, when she visited grand cities she would be carried from place to place in a litter. Her light cotton slippers were made for padding gently through courtyards, not climbing over roots and rocks. It was not long before they were soiled with blood and dirt. Sheer determination drove her forward until at last she came to a stream. The water came just past her knee, deep enough to obscure any disturbances she might make on the stone riverbed, but shallow enough not to impede her movement. Perfect to evade a mongoose lizard in pursuit.

She counted down the time it would take for a hawk to deliver a frantic message to the Fire Lord. Perhaps he would feel terror, thinking she would be on her way to slay him as he slept in the night? Perhaps he would unleash his rage on the Asylum staff for their negligence and she would see a plume of smoke rising high behind her. Or perhaps he would feel distant pity, as one does for a mortally wounded animal that crawls away to die in solitude. Deep wells of shame rose in her at the thought. She pushed it out of mind and continued along the stream until well into nightfall.

Azula always felt worse after sundown. Although she grew tired she continued forward, finding her footing with more and more difficulty. Sensing movement in the shadows behind her she smothered the flame she held in her hand until it would only light the path before her. She feared her pursuers were gaining on her, watching her struggle through the shrubs. Once or twice she turned suddenly to confront them, only to come to face with a startled owl-monkey flapping away. Azula had always captured people’s attention, even more than one would expect of a Princess. She had a gravitas that was difficult to ignore. During her time at the asylum, it was not the flattering attention of the nobles, nor the gratifying caution displayed by those she intimidated, but a constant watchfulness that she could feel boring into her very skin. However many miles she had walked, she felt it now.

She came to a stop in a clearing of ferns under an eroded cliff face. Boulders lay where they had fallen decades, if not hundreds of years ago; to Azula, cover from prying eyes.

 _Anyone who wants to catch me will have to reveal themselves_ , she thought with a grim smile.

She set about making a small fire. Sitting finally, she began tore strips of fabric from her gown to use as makeshift bandages for her feet. This was something she was used to. As far as possible, she had always tended to her own wounds. Burns were common for any training fire bender and she had kept a drawer of balms, ointments and bandages in her chambers at the palace. And, when travelling through the Earth Kingdom, it was only when Ty Lee insisted that the Princess allowed her to apply dressings and creams that stung with gentle fingers. With no such luxuries available to her now, she did her best to clean the cuts with the least soiled parts of her gown before binding the balls of her feet.

A cool breeze whipped through the air, making the fire stutter. Azula all but froze where she sat. Surely not the Avatar, not so soon? But no, the air felt heavy and wet, not the dry blustering quality of an incoming air bender attack. So what then was causing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise? She quickly tucked the end of the strip of fabric into the rest of the bandages on her foot and silently crept behind the closest boulder between her fire and the shadowed trees beyond the clearing. Lack of sleep and food made her see figures where there were none, but she pricked her ears for any foreign sound in the rustling of the trees. She perched there like that, still and listening, losing track of time as the damp seeped into her gown. When at last her heart stopped beating in her ears, she relaxed, and turned back towards the fire. And there, sitting crossed legged and mournful, was Ursa.

“Mother!”

“Azula, you’re bleeding. What are you doing out here alone?”

There was a note of derision that laced her concern. 

“I thought I might have lost you when I left that place but I guess I am not so lucky,” she spat.

“Where are you going Azula? Your brother will be worried about you. Your friends.”

Azula let out a strangled laugh. “They are nothing to me!” she said, leaving unspoken the words, “and I am nothing to them,” to hang heavily in the air. What was a broken wretch to those who used to fear her, or powerlessness to those who had been ambitious for her? 

“And how can you lecture me about running away from Zuko? You left him, didn’t you? You left _me_!”

“My daughter, I never wanted to leave you.” Ursa’s voice was gentle now. But this only aggravated the Princess more. Stepping towards her mother, Azula threw her arms wildly as she cried:

“If only I could banish you like Dad did! Go! GO!”

And suddenly the fire spluttered and cracked. As Azula turned the fire shot high, high above her. Falling backwards, she watched in terror. This was not her doing. Fear gripped her as the flames shifted, taking form; the body of the fire grew metres above the small stone pit she had made earlier in the night. Before her eyes, it became an apparition of a phoenix, proud and golden-white, with wings outstretched.

“D-Dad?”

Half expecting a blow, Azula shakily threw herself into a kowtow, hoping it would appease the phoenix. She clenched her eyes shut and listened to the roar of the fire. It overwhelmed all other sounds.

While she lay there, she became aware that the phoenix did not produce the incinerating heat she knew as Ozai’s. And although the phoenix was ferocious, its warmth chased away the clammy air. As her fear subsided, she chanced a look up at it. It didn’t appear solid, but nor was it nebulous like ordinary fire. Azula felt herself beheld in its gaze. She did not know how long she knelt, fixed before the phoenix. But as quickly as it had appeared, the phoenix radiated one last wave of heat, and vanished. Once again, Azula was alone, with only embers to testify to what she had seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being more of a Azula Alone x Firebending Masters style chapter, but who doesn't like to be a little awestruck? Azula's awful adventure will continue next chapter. Drop a comment if you enjoyed.


	3. Smoke and Mirrors

A day or so had passed since Azula’s first, frightful night in the forest. She had not slept until well after dawn, having run wild away from the clearing where she had seen the vision of the phoenix in the fire. She woke to midday sun, unsure how long she had been sleeping curled tightly in the crook of a tree root. In her panic, she had run blindly but a few  paces from a humble ancestral shrine nestled in the trees of the forest.

Azula examined the simple stone structures- volcanic rock piled into domes and arches surrounding an oblong slab. The slab was adorned with bas relief depictions of dragons and flying fish. At its base was an inlaid incense burner, judging from the scorch marks, still in use, and, to Azula’s  great excitement, a small collection of offerings. The rotten fruit she ignored, but the jar of fermented octo-crab she ate with relish. As she licked the last of the pungent brine from the octopus shell she examined the remaining offers. A fire sage prayer scroll of reverence to the ancestors, a jade dragon figurine to represent honour and duty, and a tarnished hand held mirror. This caught her gaze. An unaware observer might mistake this as a token to the ancestors vanity, but mirrors or metals polished until shiny were common offerings for a different reason. 

_ Today was the festival of Spring Lights, but a few months after the death of Azulon and the disappearance of Fire Lady Ursa. On this day at the peak of Spring, ancestral spirits were said to be so close to their living counterparts that they could almost be touched. Lanterns were stung across every street, adorning every house: thousands of flames flickering inside these colourful paper lanterns left dancing shadows on the mortals that walked beneath. The festivities hushed as the Royal family walked towards the lake of the caldera surrounded by a procession of guards. While Ozai and Iroh walked tense in the rear, Azula walked alongside Zuko at the head of the procession. Zuko was serious, and did not even smile as the firebending dancers created vast displays of criss-crossing lights, blooming flowers and streams of fire that ran like rivers in the night sky. Azula tried to copy the sombre expression held by Zuko, seemingly unaffected by the displays around him, but she was itching to show off her own bending. She could conjure a dragon perhaps, to consume the shooting stars of the dancings, but a single dark glance from her Father kept her hands firmly clasped together. _

_ The family arrived at the edge of the lake, before the recently erected statue of Fire Lord Azulon. Polished stone depicted him severe and kingly, and many years younger than Azula had ever known him. At his feet was set a golden altar, embossed with fire. As Azula peaked her head to look upon the altar, she saw her wide-eyed expression gazing back at her. Iroh appeared behind her, one hand on Zuko’s shoulder, the other holding a red coin purse. _

_ “Will you put an offering down for you Grandfather, my nephew?” _

_ Zuko put his hand in the purse, and rummaged through it for what seemed like longer than necessary in Azula’s opinion, and selected a large golden coin as Iroh indulgently looked on. Azula too selected a golden coin and the two Royal children approached the shrine. Azula looked up at the statue's eyes, no colder in stone than they were in life.  _

_ “Do you know why we honour your Grandfather and other spirits on this day?” Iroh asked. _

_ Zuko searched for an answer, looking up to Azulon. _

_ “Is it to remember them, even though they are gone, Uncle?” _

_ “No Zuzu! It’s so they don’t punish us and curse us! You had better give Grandfather another coin or he’ll haunt you because your firebending forms are sloppy!” _

_ Zuko looked at her angrily, but before he could retort, Iroh interrupted: _

__

_ “You are both wrong. Zuko, we honour our ancestors so they may provide us with good fortune and wisdom.” _

_ Turning to Azula, he frowned. _

_ “ _ **_And Azula_ ** _ , our ancestors do not curse us, however much our actions may deserve it.” _

_ Azula scowled, not quite understanding what he meant. Iroh looked between his Royal nephew and niece, as a smile broke through his frown.  _

_ “The spirits however aren’t so forgiving.” _

_ Zuko’s eyes widened, but Azula was skeptical. _

_ “Spirits are drawn to places where we convene with our ancestors. If we are not careful, they can be treacherous, and tell us falsehoods.”  _

_ Iroh gestured towards the altar, as his eyebrows raised conspiratorially. _

_ “These dark spirits can be caught in their own reflection. If a spirit tried to spin lies and set you astray as you seek wisdom from your Grandfather, it will be trapped as long as the shine of this altar remains!” _

_ With these words Zuko looked carefully into the sheen of the altar, unsure whether to believe their uncle. Azula, however, had grown tired of Iroh’s tall tales. _

_ “Zuzu you’re so gullible!” she called, grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the lake. “Let’s light a candle for Grandfather.” _

_ Taking a candle each from an official dressed in gold and black, they crouched by the edge of the water. The candles were of a deep yellow wax, and were set on a paper float. Zuko was still solemn, and Azula had still not seen him smile all night. Sick of the seriousness of everyone around her on such a colourful night, Azula grinned mischievously. As her brother leaned forward to place the candle in the caldera lake, Azula pretended to push him in. He gave a yelp and jumped aside. Expecting contact where there was now none, Azula’s foot slipped, and it was now her afraid she would fall into the lake. Her heart leapt: there was nothing she could do to stop herself falling. In the final moment, Zuko caught her by the fabric of her clothes, and she fell backwards onto solid ground. They stared at each other, shocked, before Zuko’s face broke into laughter. Azula huffed and got angrily to her feet. Re-lighting her candle, she carefully placed it in the water while Zuko continued to laugh at her. As she watched it lap in the water she felt a small glow on her cheeks; although she wouldn’t show it, she was pleased at least that Zuko would stop sulking for the remainder of the night. _

Whoever tended this shrine was as superstitious as Uncle then. And maybe Azula was growing superstitious herself, the hair-raising visions of her mother and the phoenix from the night before playing on her mind, because she pocketed the mirror. She had survived her first night alone, but she had no doubt the mongoose lizard trackers to catch onto her scent before long. She had to think.

The southern volcanoes of the Fire Nation were home to villages and port towns that traded deep sea fish, farmed from the north west of the Southern Air Temple. If she could make it to a town, large enough that a stranger’s presence would not be remarked upon, but small enough that it would not be serviced by soldiers, she may be able to evade capture. Her train of thought was interrupted by the groaning of her stomach. She would need more food. And a change of clothes. Even a simple fisherman would spot her out of place as she was. It was clear the shrine had been tended to recently, and the faint trail of rocks and cleared shrubbery indicated a regularly used path. 

_ To someone’s house perhaps?  _ she wondered.  _ Maybe they will have more octo-crab. _

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azula had a quick mind and quick feet, and she had no qualms about stealing. What did people expect, leaving their clothes and shoes drawn neatly out to dry in the open air? She ducked out of the fenced peasant garden once she determined the occupant of the attached house would not wake to her footsteps, a basket filled with clothes and whatever food she found inside.

Keeping to the shadows, she explored the surroundings of the small number of houses settled down the hill from the shrine. Daring to scout a little further, she followed a trail towards the sound of water. The trickling stream she had waded through to lose the scent of the mongoose lizards the day before had turned into a slow moving river, and along an inlet was a shack, piled high with fishing canoes. The sight was a gift to desperate eyes. She tucked away the location of the inlet, and hastened back to the shrine. Azula had one more thing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was a little slower than i thought it would be but i hope you enjoyed. there is so much to unpack w azula so im trying to take my time to explore her character - where she came from and where she is going. we will be getting some more current day character interactions in coming chapters which will be fun.
> 
> as always i appreciate hearing your comments


	4. Beautiful Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> also known as azula and the terrible haircut, but let she who has not given herself a regrettable haircut during a personal crisis cast the first stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some parts of this fic were inspired by my gfs morrowind first council fic - drawing apart of curtains @HourofWakening

On the ground, Azula laid out several items: Well worn fisherman garb, a straw sugegasa, simple leather sandals that were slightly too large, and a woven open basket with straps to secure it to the wearer’s back. Azula considered the stolen items with a look of distaste. Wearing these, she would not be out of place at any Fire Nation marketplace, and that was the point of their selection. But this thought did little to quell the quiet budding rage she felt. It had been a desperate few days, few months, few years. She was a Princess after all, used to fine tailored clothing and armour befitting her status. Even the Asylum gown she still wore was made of pure silk. The stark reality of her daring plan, to disappear in plain sight of her pursuers by wearing commoner’s clothes, was threatening to push her over the edge. So she sat, pouting, on the stonework laid into the forest floor. Better to pout and plan, stew in indignation than to let the rage and pain overwhelm her. Never again did she want to be that broken girl. Would she really be undone again by a costume, even if it did reek of fish and sweat?

Azula had worn costumes before. She played the perfect prodigal daughter to her Father, mastering endless katas and firebending techniques, studying ancient battles and military strategy, and never speaking out of turn. Before her Mother disappeared, she spent her free time acting out stories she had seen in the theatre, with Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee: she was always the hero, and used her firebending to great dramatic effect. She staged the bloodless coup of Ba Sing Sa, only possible with the legitimacy afforded by the thick theatre make-up and a heavy armoured dress of the Kyoshi Warriors. For the most part, Azula could shape herself into whatever was needed in the moment and it had always served her well.

But this? This was different. Those costumes had been donned to honour her nation or her Father. It was easy to lose herself in the role when she embodied the spirit of her nation. She simply channeled its, or his, will. And she enjoyed it, the purpose of it, the grounding power of it. When she knew what strings to pull, what tone to use, what words cut to the point, she revelled. But… there were times she became unstuck. 

“Mother never trusted me,” Azula thought. There had always been some hesitation in her, hinting at some emotion that Azula could not place. It was like she was being watched closely, scrutinised, yet held at a distance that Azula could never breach for all her cajoling or acting out. Her Father was easy to please, if you had the willingness to do so. Her Mother however… 

Looking at the commoner’s clothes, she saw no noble purpose. She had never cared to speak to a peasant before, if you didn’t count the Avatar and his friends. How on earth did Zuko manage? She let out a scornful laugh, imagining her fumbling, awkward brother feeling at home with those beneath him. But then her mouth twisted, for it was him, the banished Prince, now on the throne. And her? A fugitive in the wilds. And she had no uncle to guide her. It was just her and these dirty, stolen clothes, running away.

_ Fitting for an abject failure. Brother is as large as his successes. I am as small as everything I’ve lost. _

Azula bit down the sick shame that rocked her. Besides the sandals, the clothes fit comfortably. She regarded her regal topknot in the hand-held mirror. She had lost the habit of wearing rouge on her lips whilst in the Asylum. But she learnt to style her hair, and she was allowed a small brush and comb to do so. One of the many routines she had formed during her time there was to sit, on the edge of her bed, brushing oils through her hair. She would then pull it back into a knot on her crown, fastened with a simple golden clip. 

Before then she had never needed to care for her own hair. She had an early memory of being but about four years old, sat before her dresser. The young Princess watched her Mother pull her hair tightly back, so tight it hurt, and folded it into a careful topknot. “You’ve got beautiful, black hair Azula,” she gently, but not smiling. When the servants tended to her she had insisted on pulling free the hair at her temples, swatting their hands away when they tried to clip it back. Her Mother never commented on this case of her willfulness, only eyeing it impassively when Azula sat for dinner that night.

Azula had far more sweet memories too, that she kept locked up, only to return to when no-one was watching. When she had travelled through the Earth Kingdom before the coup of Ba Sing Se, there were many times when Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee had been far from the luxury of house staff. 

_ Azula stood aside from her two friends in the tent they shared while on the road. Mai was rather glumly separating her hair into parts, pulling the body of her hair back, leaving two trailing locks behind her ears to fall loose. Ty Lee stood on one leg, balancing as she plaited her long hair, her chattering punctuated by high pitched giggles. Mai rose to her feet. _

_ “I’m going to see what there is for breakfast. Ugh,” Mai said as she left the tent. Most likely she would find tea, dried fish, and pi dan. Mai didn’t like preserved food, even when prepared by the best Fire Nation chefs serving in the Earth Kingdom. Ty Lee skipped to catch up to her. _

_ “Don’t leave, Ty Lee,” Azula commanded. When Mai paused at the entrance, she flicked her head to indicate she was free to go. The Princess was in a prickly mood, but her expression softened slightly when Ty Lee smiled placatingly at her. _

_ “What’s up Azula? Did you sleep alright? The ground is so hard to sleep on, isn’t it? My parents always told me a hard bed is good for your back but I can never sleep without a hundred pillows around me!” She said this in a bubbly, but slightly hurried way. Ty Lee’s round eyes searched Azula’s face for a reason for her bad mood so early in the morning. _

_ Azula averted her eyes. “I-” she tried to begin. Her friend tilted her head, waiting for her. _

_ “I need you to tie my hair for me. I can’t do it myself without a mirror...” _

_ Her voice trailed off, rather pathetically in Azula’s mind. She felt faint colour rising in her cheeks as Ty Lee’s eyes widened. _

_ “My hairstyle is far more complex than your little plait thing. Normally I have servants, you know,” she said more firmly, daring Ty Lee to laugh.  _

_ But the laughter never came. Instead Ty Lee practically beamed, bouncing from foot to foot. _

_ “Wow Azula! I’ve always wanted to play with your hair! AH I mean, it’s so beautiful and silky and so straight! When I was at home I used to style my sisters’ hair all the time!” _

_ Azula turned to look at her straight on, and raised her hand slightly. _

_ “Just pull it back like I normally wear it.” _

_ She sat cross legged with her back to Ty Lee, while Ty Lee ran her hands through the Princess’ hair. She hummed as she worked, and combed the hair to gently work out any knots she found. Azula looked down, playing with her hands in her lap. It was different, having her hair touched by a friend. Servants were nothing to her. This felt… exposing. Ty Lee let her sit in silence, asking questions out loud - “does it normally part here or here?” - and not expecting answers. The Princess felt her friend’s fingers linger on the baby hairs at the nape of her neck. Ty Lee could chi block or strangle her in an instant. The thought made Azula catch her breath, her heart racing as ridiculous thoughts spun around her head. Was it becoming for a General to be tended to by her lieutenant like this? A Princess by her childhood friend? For her heart to be beating in her ears so loudly that surely Ty Lee could hear it too? Ty Lee clasped the fire emblem pin in the bun and moved around to face Azula. She pulled the strands by her temples loose and straightened them by the sides of Azula’s cheeks, almost cupping her face. _

_ “There!” _

_ She wore a satisfied smile that Azula could not bring herself to look upon. Ty Lee was at ease with such intimacy. But she didn’t push the Princess either. _

_ “I can do it again tomorrow, if you like?” _

_ When Azula gave her a cursory nod, Ty Lee left to join Mai by the campfire, leaving Azula alone with her thoughts. _

What would she think, seeing Azula like this now? Evidently both Mai and Ty Lee had chosen the winning side. Her Brother’s side. And now she had nothing to impose over them: no rank, no office, and now not even her physical strength. “There’s always my personal charm,” she thought, smiling bitterly. Honey, not vinegar or so the saying goes. That approach had helped her escape from the Asylum, but at the cost of her pride. “No, best I disappear.”

Zuko would be well aware of her escape by now. Azula imagined that fliers bearing her resemblance were being posted all around the Fire Nation. Maybe they would even use her royal portrait. She was a wanted person, and the weight of the Fire Lord would bear down upon her until she was caught. There was only one thing to do. Her topknot symbolised her honour, her duty to the Fire Nation and the throne, her Father. The latter thought made her blood run cold. She would not desecrate it by stuffing it under a stolen peasants sugegasa. She drew her topknot high above her head and bent her fingers iron hot. 

_...such beautiful hair… _

When they pressed to the base of the topknot, the hair sizzled black and curled back over itself. The foul smell reached her immediately. She pressed through until the knot came clean off, holding its shape due to the cauterised bottom. The simple golden clip still caught it. She felt a little ill looking at it in her hand. Azula gingerly brushed her fingers over the crown of her head. Where she had singed through it, the hair clumped together, while longer strands fell loose to her shoulders. She felt for her mirror in her pocket; superstitious or not the mirror was proving useful at least.

Seeing herself, she saw a stranger. The sugegasa sat low, obscuring her eyes, and her newly cut hair sat just short of her shoulders. Princess Azula would pass very well for any peasant class labourer. Her mouth twisted, uncertain whether to be proud or ashamed of her transformation.

Azula threw her Asylum gown and slippers in the basket: she did not want anyone to realise she had passed through this area and her abandoned clothes would lead the mongoose lizards straight here. In the basket also she placed the small pile for food she had scrounged, and the tarnished mirror. But Azula paused looking at the topknot in her hand. After carefully removing the clip, which she put in her pocket, she bent a deep blue flame, which consumed the last of her hair with a hiss.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Princess passed unseen through the settlement from which she had stolen the clothes she was now wearing. A good thing it was too, she thought with a smirk, as she would not have liked to face a rabble of angry peasants, shouting for her blood. As she rounded on the inlet where she had earlier found the shack full of canoes, she saw one, already in the water. Luck was on her side. She waded through the river water and placed her basket carefully inside. Although it did not look it, the canoe was hardly stable. Azula delicately stepped inside, leaning sideways to counterbalance the weight of her body. At last she tucked her legs inside, now able to use the paddle to keep herself steady. She took off into the dusk, turning from the inlet into the river proper.

The water was dark, and looked almost like syrup, bubbles rising to the surface from below. The river moved slowly, guiding her towards the coast where she expected to find a port town. Through the trees on the banks, she could see above to the settlement. Barking orders resounded across the water. Fire Nation soldiers? Yes, there was a flash or the red and black armour, just visible through the leaves. So Zuko believed she had been through here, or it was simply a logical place to pass through on her escape. But Azula had slipped through their fingers again, paddling steadily downstream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> such a dream to finally get to some retrospective tyzula content. their relationship is so complicated it was hard to strike the right tone, but we'll get to explore that more later. this chapter kind of marks the end of the first part of azula's story. our heroine will be venturing forth into the Real World next chapter ... hijinks will ensue.
> 
> as always drop a kudos or comment if you liked/had feedback. it is very good motivation to keep me going to hear your thoughts
> 
> p.s. did anyone see the tenzin reference?


	5. Step by Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cut loose from the Asylum, Azula's just gonna keep on walking.

Azula spent the winter months walking, head down, from coastal town to coastal town. 

Her capricious fishing canoe lay abandoned, or rather decommissioned, on the riverbed near the mouth of the river. Azula had approached the port town, Lin, where the river met the ocean, only to find it overrun by soldiers. If there were ever a time she resented the efficiency by which the centralised control of the Caldera Capital was able to fortify its ports at short notice, it was now. Every vessel leaving the shores of Lin was searched before being allowed to disembark. “No room for stowaways,” the Princess thought grimly. But Zuko couldn’t lock down the entire Outer South Coast. Not when it was so central to the agriculture and military based economies of the Southern portion of the Fire Islands. Her best chance of finding a sea route far away from the Asylum and the ugly memories it contained would lie Eastward. Where exactly Azula did not know. A combination of instinct, careful planning, and blind fear had led her this far. And instinct now was telling her to put as much distance between her and the Setting Sun Asylum as possible. So she took to the roads that connected farming villages to the larger port towns, just another labourer on the road looking for work.

Her days were filled with walking. Soon she broke in the too-big sandals; either the leather softened or her skin hardened over with blisters turned calluses. But it was not the constant determined steps of someone buoyed by fear as it had been in the forest. She had seen no sign of approaching trackers along the sprawling dirt road, and this calmed her more than anything. While her hunters had correctly guessed she would follow the waterways to the coast, rather than try to scale a mountain path North towards the Capital, her decision to steal the canoe allowed her to move far further downstream than if she had walked. So she allowed herself the luxury of a steady, but leisurely pace, detouring through smaller villages off the main roads. 

She had never pictured herself the vagabond type, but there was a sense of satisfaction she derived from simply putting one foot before the other. She found comfort in routine, rising with the sun and setting out. She learnt what food could be scrumaged by the roadside from watching village children, packs of them sometimes, cluster around certain plants, picking roots and leaves and fruits. When she was lucky enough to be passing by a lot with fowl, Azula would sneak eggs from unguarded nests. The sun beat on her back and she found herself practising her breath control exercises. No longer subdued by chemical and physical restraints, Azula found herself full of nervous energy. In the evenings in particular, she was prone to overwhelming agitation, the sense that she had lost control of her destiny, sharpened by the open vastness of the countryside. So it was when she had settled down for the night, tucked into a cave in a cliff or behind a hillock surrounded by farmland, she turned to the exercises she had always used to calm her nerves.

As a child, when, late at night, she was too afraid to sleep she would light a small candle so as not to attract the attention of her servants, and practised her foundational katas and resting firebending stances. She imagined the flickering shadows on the walls were enemies, reacting to their movements with flowing katas. And so now, on her own in the Fire Nation countryside she did the same. Fireless, of course, not wanting to attract attention, but working through each form provided resistance to her unpractised muscles. In the Asylum she was banned from such exercises, as they were deemed to be unacceptably aggressive. But for Azula, her training had always been an exercise in stealing back control where she could. In this case, over her own form. When she had been captive in the Asylum, the restriction over this form of mastery over self meant she was always a hair's breadth away from snapping.

Other nights when she had not found enough food to practise her katas she would sit and watch the flames of her campside fire. The ever changing shape of the flames sometimes looked to her like the phoenix apparition that had appeared to her on the first night of her escape. But it would disappear with a breath of wind, or into blackened smoke as the bark and branches at the base of the fire curled into themselves. She wondered if it had been her Father who had gotten a favour from a sympathetic Fire Sage to call on a spirit to dog his daughter who had failed him, not only by losing the Agni Kai and throne to her traitor brother, but for failing to free him now that she had broken loose from the Asylum. She had never known him to be a spiritual man. Her Father casted a shadow long over the horizon of her future without the need of a haunting phoenix. Unlike the visions of her Mother, which spoke the vilest truths to her, whispering in her ear that which made her weak, Azula was drawn to her vision of the phoenix, terrifying as it was. Not seeing it clearly in the flames, she would pick through the fire pit for charcoal and on the walls, Azula would try to make a likeness of the vision. Like the child in her room, seeing enemies in the flickering shadows of her candle, Azula would see the phoenix move on the walls of the cave, manipulating the campfire so the charcoal would appear to grow and beat its grand wings. Doing so would keep her mind from turning to the wretched aloneness she felt, with no creature comforts to distract her.

Azula found that when closer interactions with villagers were needed, her stolen clothes were not enough for her to assimilate her with the Fire Nation peasants. As a member of the Royal family, and later a General, Azula was born into esteem. Crowds parted for her, people hushed when she spoke, and nobody dared so much as brush the clothes on her back without her explicit permission, save, perhaps Ty Lee (it was always Ty Lee). As a hungry wandering fisher girl, this was not the case. The learning curve was rather shocking for the young Princess.

One day Azula walked through the narrow cobbled streets of a larger, rice farming town, sitting up on a ridge of the volcano. Having walked across dirt terrace paths between rising platforms of rice fields, she was muddy and in a sour mood. She moved to the town centre, where she hoped to find a well to fill her clay water bottle. A wizened old crone bustled towards her in the crowded alleyway. Azula did not care to look at her until the woman walked straight into her! The crone shook her fists at Azula, muttering about a lack of respect. “Auntie! Are you okay?” a bystander called to her as she brushed him off and continued on her way. He turned on Azula now. “Uppity girl! Watch where you are going.” And then he spat at her feet. The Princess was near speechlessness with that. 

“How dare they? Don’t they know who they are talking to?” she thought furiously, fist clenched. But of course, they had no idea who she was, as was the purpose of her garb. It took some spluttering on her part, and two other villagers pushing past her as she stood, glaring at the spitting man, for the stone to drop. Perhaps the right of way was not granted to her, the lowly fisher girl, over a respected village elder? Azula, in the courts, had of course deferred to her elders, but besides her Uncle Iroh, before he left with Zuko, her Father Ozai had been the only higher ranked person she interacted with. Even the esteemed diplomats, bureaucrats, and Fire Sages bowed their heads to her. She had certainly never been shoulder barged by a woman old enough to be her great grandmother, or spat at by a lazy middle aged man. Such offenses would earn them execution for disrespect to the crown.

But Azula did not want any incidents. In the larger villages she passed through, posters with her likeness and a description of her prodigal blue firebending had been strung up with a reward large enough to convince anyone to turn her in. As tempted as she was to burn the whole village to the ground, she gritted her teeth through the affront. 

There were other habits she had to learn. Her accent, crisp and refined from years of training by palace elocution instructors and teachers at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, received her unimpressed stares from the locals. These social intricacies she could not force her way through: she needed to observe and adapt. So she listened closely to the villagers in the square. The vowels of their speech were drawn out longer than her own. Their intonation varied more greatly than hers, leading to a more expressive sound. On her own in her camp she practised this with her own speech. Like any new firebending technique, she mastered the local idioms, the accent of the lower classes.

More than anything, she learnt rueful humility. Or at least the appearance of such. She searched her memories back to the housestaff at the palace. She hardly noticed them, their ritualistic movements over the grounds of the Caldera Royal estate she grew up in. They disappeared into the walls, calling no attention to themselves unless needed. They saw all, heard all, knew each member of the Royal family intimately, but she could barely tell them apart, her personal attendants excluded.That is what she needed to emulate most now, if she were ever to evade the attention of soldiers and bounty hunters, no doubt searching for her still. She assumed all eyes that fell on her would report to the Fire Lord himself. All her manners needed tempering. For how long she did not know. But it mattered not. A fitting fate from the Princess who relied on calculated intimidation to dominate all those around her. Bowing her head, eyes averted, to small time peasants in the impoverished reaches of the Fire Nation.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As she passed further East, Azula came across larger plots of land, some surrounded by vast walls, or patrolled by private guards. Remnants of the vast sections of the Fire Nation that had once been controlled by clans, competing for influence in the court. Her Great-Great Grandfather had been responsible for breaking up the holdings of the regional powers, giving more land, and therefore more power to local chiefs and farmers; essentially, they were glorified peasants that were more easily pressured under the centralised might of the Fire Lord himself. Nobles with ties to clans who willingly capitulated to the Fire Lord’s reforms were granted personal positions of power in the court, securing favours for them and their families. However, soon those individual nobles passed on or into irrelevance, but the consequences of their selfish politicking was laid bare. Azula’s family had been securely in power for centuries. There are many ways to skin a cat; the best rulers need not use brute force to enact their will, a lesson Azula took to heart.

Regionalism was still intact however, and on the outer Southern coast of the mainland, this was particularly apparent. Blessed with little resources of strategic purposes outside of good agricultural land on the volcanic planes, and easy entry to the Southern Ocean, the clan of this locality held onto resentment centuries old against the Caldera Capital, perceived to be overreaching beyond the range of volcanic mountain between them and the Royal throne. As a naturally keen student of history, and when her Brother had been banished, groomed to be the heir to the throne, Azula was deeply aware that crops grown here had serviced the raiding fleets of the Southern Water Tribe. Now that the war had ended, this region was likely suffering, and subject to discontent. How fickle fortune could be in the Fire Nation. Dear Zuko rather had his head in the clouds, preferring to daydream about folklore and theatre than the political machinations of the various factions at play in his own Nation. That could not be helped, and so she simply watched the clan troops patrol the borders of their lands as she walked past in the dust.

For all her high courtly learning, however, Azula had no gold to her name, and after many weeks on the road, she had grown tired of scavenged and stolen food. Given her current presentation, there was little chance she could secure any kind of clerical work, whatever might exist in an agricultural town. As a child she had refused to learn to sew, and even if she had, most of the fabric produced in these parts seemed to be woven, before being sent off to dye. The fields around her were ready for harvest. The many men in the fields, lean but strong, turned her off seeking work with a local lord. However, the crops themselves drew her attention. Azula was about half a day's walk from Kemurikaze, a larger farming town. As she approached the town, the road she walked was shared by other women, carrying large baskets stacked with fire wood, grass, or harvested crops from the fields surrounding them. 

“Auntie, where are you going with all that grass?” she asked an older woman, covered in sunspots. It took some back and forth for the woman to tell her she was going to the central market in Kemurikaze to sell what she could of the feed on her back. It was from her own, modest lot. Judging from the woman’s haggard appearance, bundles of livestock feed, even when piled comically high over her head, did not go very far. But it did give Azula an idea. Rather than continue straight into Kemurikaze, Azula doubled back to one of the largest properties she had passed that day. Scoping it out, the Princess noted that the estate house was far enough from the outer fields of crops that she would not be visible. She saw worn down dirt paths, with deep impressions in the mud, indicating regular patrols. She spent an hour or so walking the perimeter of the property, before deciding on a point of entry. That is where she would return under the cover of darkness.

In the early hours of the morning, Azula crept over the wooden fence posts into the field of eggplant vines, strung up along delicate trellises. She set about pulling the ripest plum sized eggplants from the vines, setting them gently in her basket. Once she had gathered enough she moved to the spring onions, gleeful. All of this land was her birthright, really, even if it were her brother on the throne. They would even miss what was gone. Although, she doubted the patrol headed her way would be so inclined as to let her leave with her harvest.  Azula dived to the ground, resting her basket in a dip between rows of onion shoots. The men held up a fist of flame, guiding it over the fields so as to spot any pests feasting on the crops. She dared looking over the onion shoots at the patrol. Embroidered on their brilliant red garments was a hippo oxen. This must be the land of the Ushi clan. Petty, resentful nobles with higher opinions of themselves than was warranted. This was not a clan she wanted a run in with in her current state. So she lay low in the dirt, breathing slowly and ignoring the bugs crawling under her, disturbed by her presence. And when the patrol was out of sight, she took her basket and made for the main road into Kemurikaze. With the amount of bounty in her basket, she would be able to make enough coin for her first proper meal since she had escaped the Asylum. This was going to be a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay.. exposition heavy chapter i know, but i hope it helped explain the character of the fire nation, its people, and Azula herself. i drew heavy inspiration from the shadow of kyoshi and all the lore and worldbuilding in that book (i highly recommend it, esp if you wanna see avatar kyoshi and her very cute fire nation girlfriend. i think understanding the fire nation goes a long way to explaining why Azula is the way she is - personally and politically, and she's going to see new sides of her nation now that she's roughing it.
> 
> next chapter will be more plot focused - and Azula may just meet her match. very excited to say the arrogant Azula that we all know and love will be back.
> 
> stay tuned and drop a comment or a kudos if you liked


	6. The Best Eggplant in the Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> azula has to hustle but thinks of sweeter days

There was a faraway look in her eye, her mind focused firmly on her stomach. Azula almost laughed, imagining the first meal she would buy. At the palace, she grew up eating fine selections of steamed fish with rice, thinly sliced radish quickly pickled in vinegar, and round chillies the size of her fingernail, blistering hot. Light, but filling; the chili making her sinus sting awake. But the best meal she had ever had was in the Earth Kingdom.

_ It was a couple of days after the Ba Sing Se coup. Azula, Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee were housed in the Imperial Apartments in the Upper Ring, having been moved there by the Dai Li from the Middle Ring where they had resided as the false Kyoshi Warriors. The Fire Nation troops had swarmed the city, and at last the group had a chance to relax. The mood was jubilant. Even Mai appeared more animated than usual, although Azula was not sure whether that was because of their historic victory over the Earth Kingdom or because Zuko had joined their party. Her furtive glances in his direction caught the attention of everyone except Zuko himself, as consumed as he was by his own emotional whims. Every time Ty Lee or Azula noticed a lapse in Mai’s attention from the conversation they fell over themselves with laughter, to her increasing displeasure. _

_ They had a banquet style lunch, course after course of the best culinary showing of the Earth Kingdom. They even shared a small bottle of rice wine, which they toasted to the fall of the Avatar, and of Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation, and to the efforts of each individual at the table. _

_ “To Ty Lee, for leaping fearlessly into a pipe of slurry!” _

_ “To Mai, for deceiving the Dai Li into thinking the false Kyoshi Warriors were such careless sneaks!” _

_ “To Azula, for masterminding the coup single-handedly!” _

_ “And to Zuzu, for coming home!” _

__

_ Partway through lunch, Zuko had excused himself. Ty Lee seemed concerned, both for Zuko abrupt exit and for Mai’s silent change in mood. “You don’t think we teased him  _ **_too_ ** _ much, do you?” she asked, looking wide-eyed between Mai and the Princess. When Mai didn’t answer, apparently too engrossed in the dregs of her wonton soup, in a coy voice, Azula replied, “Perhaps Zuzu felt shy with all the attention on him.” Mai blinked, a muscle working in her jaw as an uncomfortable silence fell on the table. Her chair squeaked as she stood up. “I’m going to see what he’s doing,” she said, and left Azula and Ty Lee alone in the room.  _

_ Ty Lee giggled nervously. _

_ “She shouldn’t be too upset with me. After all, I am the reason he will be coming back with us at all.” _

_ “No… I guess she shouldn’t be. She’ll brighten up when she finds him anyway.” _

_ Both of them burst into giggles again at the thought of Mai, stoic as ever but betrayed by the brilliant pink blush on her cheeks whenever Zuko was close. _

_ “Forget about them Ty Lee. We should be celebrating.” _

_ Ty Lee gave Azula a guilty smile. Her cheeks had become rosy over the course of the banquet, and each toast of the rice wine. They looked at each other for a few too many moments before Azula reached for the bottle. _

_ “Do you think the others will mind if we finish this off?”  _

_ “I think they shouldn’t have left in the first place, Azula! Okay. To the smartest, prettiest conqueror of Ba Sing Se.” _

_ “Even prettier than my Uncle?” _

_ “Well he never managed to get past the first wall, did he?” _

_ They threw back their glasses and fell into laughter again. Once she had recovered herself, Ty Lee helped herself to some more turtleduck. She ate it indulgently. A single grain of rice, stuck to her nose from the bowl she ate from. _

_ While her manners would be unacceptable in the Royal Palace in the Fire Nation Capital, here it just made Azula’s stomach twinge. Emboldened by her recent victories, and maybe a little from the rice wine, Azula leaned forward and brushed the rice from Ty Lee’s nose. She squeaked with surprise. “It was just a piece of rice, Ty Lee. Be glad no one else saw that,” Azula said, her voice mockingly stern. But of course, she was glad there was no one else to see it, for she would never act so familiar with Ty Lee in front of others. Only in these little asides did she seem to loosen her inhibitions so. Ty Lee brought her own hand to her nose, rubbing the spot where Azula had touched. Once she had regained her composure, with a glint of cunning in her eyes fixed to Azula’s, she picked a piece of tofu from the Princess’ plate and ate it in one movement. Now it was Azula’s turn to be surprised. _

_ “And you should be glad no one saw that!” Ty Lee teased. _

_ And together, they enjoyed the rest of the banquet, all the sweeter. _

What she would not give for a meal like that now. Although, considering her surroundings, sleepy volcanic planes in the backwaters on the main Fire Island, she would likely find slightly more rustic fare. As long as it was hot. All that stood between Azula and the dream breakfast that was already making her mouth water was the basket full of stolen Ushi clan vegetables. And, judging by the open air marketplace, already crowded despite the sun barely dawning on the day, about two dozen women competing to sell their produce.

There appeared to be a hierarchy of produce sellers, with those facing the major street appearing comfortable and established, selling the freshest looking fruits and vegetables for the highest price, while the women further inside had to compensate for their inferior position with louder calls, and lower prices. Smart, young farmer girls took advantage of their mobility by spruiking their fare on the corners of the streets, hoping to catch the eye of a casual passer-by, selling one or two fruits at a time. Azula eyed the coveted central stalls jealousy. She has miscalculated. She needed to arrive far earlier to secure that ideal position. She lingered, watching the older woman with the largest stall. The woman had a stream of customers from the food hawkes and restaurantiers, buying string bags full of spring onions, bulbs or garlic, and carefully wrapped chicken lizard eggs. Her neighbouring stall owners, tempted to seduce her customers waiting in line were quietened by but a single look from the woman. 

Rather than being deterred, Azula felt the stirrings of pride. The woman had an admirable command over her section of the market, expertly placing the most expensive produce in her customers hands, taking the bronze and silver from their hands, and waving them off with a smile, and all the while constantly scanning her surroundings for the next sale.

“How is your husband? Take this ginger and brew it with lemongrass and a small pinch of salt and it will fix his cough in no time, I promise! Come back tomorrow and I’ll have those melon yams your little girl loves.”

The front of the stall now free, the Princess approached. The stall itself was actually several wooden crates with a tarp pulled over the top. Spread out were piles of garlic, ginger, radishes, bright green bunches of coriander, and in the centre, purple and white eggplants, just as Azula held in her basket. The woman’s eyes became sharp as they rested on Azula.

“What do you want? This area is for customers,” the woman said, her gaze sweeping down Azula’s ragged clothes and basket filled with produce, “which you are clearly _ not. _ ” Azula grazed her fingers across the woman’s display, fingering the hand written price labels. Her eyes glinted and she looked into the older woman’s face. “Who’s to say I’m not just admiring your set up. Central location, your produce is in line of sight of everyone who walks by, and you sure know how to work a crowd.” A few of the other market women were watching surreptitiously from their stands, keen to witness this dangerous meeting, but not wanting to draw the ire of either Azula nor the older woman. The older woman seemed to swell, her lip curling as Azula picked up one of the prized eggplants and examined its skin for blemishes.

“It’s clear you think highly of yourself, with prices like these,” Azula said in a soft voice, a malevolent smile playing on her lips. A hush fell over the market. The other women exchanged glances, and one gasped, “Yumi!” looking between Azula and the target of her insult. Azula watched as the older woman bristled. But then, a triumphant smile cracked through.

“Disrespectful, little girl. You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the best eggplant in the whole Fire Nation. You will not find a better deal in this town. Everybody knows Ushi farms grow the best food.” The old woman leant back, satisfied she had landed a killing blow. She folded her arms as she said, “Why don’t you leave?”

Azula did not give away the little thrill she felt. So she had happened to steal the best produce in the Fire Nation? Her eyes passed over the marketplace where a small audience had gathered, hardly daring to anticipate how she would react. Looking the older woman directly in the eyes, she smiled greater still. “Good day,” she said with a slight bow. She turned away, still smiling, leaving the market in peace. She would not be able to sell her harvest at the market itself, the women there made that perfectly clear. But she decided on something better. She now knew she held the best, and most expensive fare in the town.

She headed towards the closest thing Kemurikaze had to a commercial strip, home to guesthouses, restaurants, and street food stalls. On the corner of the street was a man, setting up a cooking station with a pile of soft sweet bread next to him.

“If you come back in 10 minutes I’ll make you the best rou jia mo you’ve ever had.”

But Azula wasn’t interested in rou jia mo. At least not while she had no way to pay for it.

“Have you ever made your rou jia mo with the best Ushi eggplant money can buy?” Azula asked, tipping her basket so the man could see. “I’m offering them for below market prices. You could sell twice as much as you do normally.”

The man looked unconvinced.

“Here, feel how heavy they are.”

The man took an eggplant, weighing it back and forth in his hands.

“Look at the give in that flesh. Tell me that won’t go well on your rou jia mo.”

Apparently sold, the man was reaching for some coins when he said “I thought Yumi was the Ushi clan seller. I’ve never seen you before.” Azula did not miss a beat. “Well they had such a good harvest this year. The crops would have rotted in the fields unless they hired extra help,” she explained smoothly. 

Azula went from shop to shop, food hawker to food hawker, even intercepting passers by heading towards the market, selling spring onions and eggplants as if that was what she was born to do. She had a knack for saying the right things at the right time, playing on people's greed to sell her her whole basket of stolen produce. She was just counting her silver and bronze coins by the side of the road when a shadow loomed.

Standing over her was one of the younger farmer girls from the market. Azula, barely looking up, said “If you’re looking to buy something I’ve already sold out.” Instead of answering the girl crouched down, balancing on the balls of her feet. Azula raised her eyebrows expectantly at the girl, who simply watched her for a moment.

“Yumi is not very pleased that someone undercut her.”

She narrowed her eyes at the girl. She had a pleasant smile, warm yellow eyes. A laborer, clearly, from her rather lean appearance.

“I was just doing honest work. It’s not my fault Yumi couldn’t compete.”

The girl ignored her. “The wholesale price of Ushi produce is very high. Yumi sets the prices she does because she has to. But you were obviously selling Ushi eggplants. It's an heirloom variety that is very distinctive.”

_ How does she even know what I was selling?  _ Azula looked over at the rou jia mo man, who shrugged and looked away, and her eyes.  _ Idiot _ . Commanding as much authority as she could while sitting in the gutter counting petty change, she sniffed at the girl.

“Why are you bothering me with this?”

Annoyingly, the girl looked amused with Azula. But she was straight to the point.

“I’m from the property next to the Ushi clan farm. Early this morning the foreman knocked on our door asking whether we had been bothered by a thief in the night too. I’m assuming that thief was you.”

If Azula was unnerved, she didn’t show it. All the same, she thought “ _ Maybe my little show of bravado at the market was unwise.”  _ She lifted her chin.

“So what if I did? I’ve sold it all now.”

The girl tilted her head. Azula followed her gaze to the pair of soldiers passing by. That made her flinch, if only slightly. But enough for the girl to recognise as leverage. The Princess could probably talk her way out of the consequences of petty theft. If they recognised her, however… She could not imagine a worse humiliation than being found, covered in dirt selling vegetables by the side of the road.

“What do you want?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was fun to write. i hope you find the image of azula squaring up against a marketplace grandma as funny as me. she still likes fucking w people a little she's just got to pick her battles a little more these days.
> 
> this is turning out more like a retrospective tyzula slow burn too. that memory was almost pure fluff haha. if you like that sort of stuff i might work on some more character driven stuff in the future. 
> 
> lmk what you think and thanks everyone for the comments and feedback. i appreciate every one <3


	7. The Art of Small Talk

Azula and the farmer girl, Yang, walked silently together out of Kemurikaze, following the dirt road in the opposite direction she had walked this morning. The dying days of Winter meant that, despite the hot sun, arctic winds blew dust and straw in their path, bitterly cold, buffeted by the ring of volcanoes to the North. The sun was low in the sky, brilliant orange. Even with her sugegasa shading her eyes, when she looked to the horizon the flat earth shimmered and reflected the late afternoon sky.

Before they had left town, Azula insisted on stopping by a street hawker. It had been surprisingly hard to find one on a street not plastered with her own wanted posters, her face and a description of her abilities in plain view. Yang gave her a wide berth as she waited for her food - sour hippo cow cheese stretched to be filled with sweet and spicy jam then fried, and a flakey dough stuffed with nuts and sesame seeds - and seemed content to just  _ watch _ her. Azula felt ruffled for being stared at so openly. “I’m not sharing this with you. You can buy your own,” she snapped, glaring angrily at Yang. She shook her head and looked instead to her feet as she kicked the ground. She was unfazed by Azula’s rudeness. “This way,” Yang said once Azula had paid for the food. She didn’t reply, for her mouth was already full.

The Princess was not sure exactly why she had agreed to accompany Yang. It would have been simple enough to run out of town and continue on her path Eastward. She was hungry, yes, but her legs had grown strong on the road. The farmer girl had been impressed with Azula’s steadfast bravery in the face of Yumi, the sole local distributor of Ushi produce, and until now undisputed matriarch of the Kemurikaze marketplace. And, perhaps she had pitied her, seeing the state of her clothes and her hollowed out cheeks. Whatever her reasoning, Yang had requested Azula work on her family’s small farm in return for a daily meal and a place to sleep. While the implicit threat of the soldier’s attention being drawn to her had pushed Azula to accept, the offer of regular food and income, however meagre, was attractive. Backbreaking labour for a few coins a day. How humble she had become.

“You liked the food?” Yang asked at last.

“It was fine,” Azula answered curtly. In truth it had been delicious. She had not eaten anything so salty and fatty in… years. Rather than being satiated, the food only whet her appetite, and drew in sharp relief the austerity of her time in the Asylum and on the road.

“They only make that cheese here,” Yang said, looking over to her. “Because of all the hippo cows.” She waited for Azula to respond. 

_ Why is she telling me this?  _ Azula thought back to her days at court. As a Princess, she was expected to mingle and make nice with nobles and bureaucrats from all over the Fire Nation. During one particular banquet, Nobleman Oshii from the far western islands had proudly informed her that the fish she was eating had been farmed on his estate. No doubt trying to gain her favour for some upcoming negotiation, she had nodded to him politely and moved on. She couldn’t imagine what Yang had to gain by telling her this however. _ I suppose she’s proud of her home? _

“Do you keep hippo cattle?” she at last asked, rather weakly.

Inexplicitly, Yang shook her head. “Mainly grains. We rotate crops though. Feed for livestock for other farms.” Azula must have looked at her strangely, because Yang assumed a thoughtful expression.

“Where are you from?”

“Lin.”

“Ah. Military.”

Azula looked at her with narrowed eyes. Seeing her face, Yang laughed, and assumed a very upright posture and marched, as if in formation. Azula looked down, and saw she was indeed very upright, her movements deliberate and articulate, without her even realising.

_ Is she mocking me? _ Her growing indignation only made Yang laugh more.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

There was no unkindness in her voice. She just seemed to find the Princess a little ridiculous. A little out of place. And there was something ridiculous about the situation. The mad crown Princess being made fun of by her farmer girl employer, at the risk of being thrown back in an insane Asylum to rot. Not that Yang knew that. All she knew was that she had picked up a strange foreign girl who had made a scene at her local market at the expense of a rival and, for some reason, decided to take her under her wing. Azula saw no harm in conceding, yes, she had a military background, because clearly she failed to present as a simple farm labourer. It did not seem to reduce her standing with Yang anyhow. So she nodded, if a little uncertainly.

Yang nodded and they walked in silence again for a time. Azula took the time to get a hold of herself. It had been months since she had spoken to anyone for this length of time. And years since someone had spoken to her without being paid to mind her. She had grown used to the sound of her footsteps alone, and Yang’s presence made her uneasy. Before leaving Kemurikaze with the girl, she had the terrible thought that she was walking into a trap. Yang might have been a low ranking member of the Ushi clan, escorting Azula to an ambush for her petty theft. She did seem sincere, apparently lost in thought and humming to herself as they passed through the fields. But, based on her own history, Azula was not the best judge of character in that regard. With that thought, her heart clenched, phantom pain arching up her back. Not wanting to lose herself in sorrow and rage, she returned to her body with deep breaths and looked to the horizon. Anyhow, she thought, if Yang and the Ushi clan were to do such a thing she would not hesitate to kill them.

“Did you work at the port?”

Yang’s question snapped her back to the present moment.

“The port?”

“The naval port. Outside of Lin.”

It took Azula a moment to understand what Yang meant. 

“Oh.” Azula considered what she could tell the farmer girl without giving away her identity. “No I toured in the Earth Kingdom for a while. I was stationed in Ba Sing Se at the time of the coup.”  _ I was the coup. _

“What?! The Earth Kingdom? I didn’t think they took  _ children _ to the front line.” Yang looked amazed, and frankly, a little disturbed.

“What? I was 14, and part of the junior corps.” 

The girl’s alarm unsettled Azula. She had proved she was more than capable in the Earth Kingdom. But then again, many citizens of the Fire Nation never saw any combat, let alone that conducted by girls her age. Besides the day of Black Sun, all military conflict occurred offshore.And besides Mai, Ty Lee, Zuko and herself, the majority of combatants had been many years their senior. It had been a point of pride for her, to be given such responsibilities at the age of 14. But it had given them all hard edges, and gulf between them and their more sheltered peers. Why else would they have destroyed the beach house of the insufferable noble teens on Ember Island? Why shouldn’t they know the taste of destruction and ash? At least then she had her friends. As different as they and their circumstances were, there was a unified sense of that distance from others. With the weight of the world on their shoulders, they found ways to co-exist.

_ It was a warm evening at the campsite that Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee had set up. They were a day’s travel from Ba Sing Se, close enough to the Fire Nation encampments that they could expect assistance in an emergency, but far enough not to attract attention from Earth Kingdom patrols. The siege of the Ba Sing Se outer wall but a few days before had been an utter failure. Azula had barely left her tent since then, writing reports to her Fathers, and correspondence with the assault leaders and espionage networks located within the walls, desperate to devise new plans of action. While the humiliation of defeat was worn almost solely by Azula, Mai and Ty Lee faced months more on the road, last minute flights to avoid detection, and of course the seething of their friend and commanding officer.  _

_ At last Azula emerged from the tent, weary and irritable, to see her friends were in no better state than she was. Mai, of course, withdrew when under pressure. Almost silent, except to snap quietly and coldly when forced to interact. She always seemed like a stone cold wall to Azula, now more than ever, but on days like this she lacked the dry humour that drew her to Azula in the first place. She looked up at Azula, attentiveness showing only in her eyes as the rest of her features were impassive. She seemed to decide Azula was not in a talkative mood, for she merely nodded her head by way of greeting, before returning to her book. _

_ Ty Lee, by contrast, exuded anxiety. Mai had evidently brushed her off for the evening, for on her brow was a perpetual crease, her lips pouted, as she completed endless repetitions of her basic acrobatics routine. A headstand, held upright for a number of counts, then springing backwards onto her feet in a fluid motion, allowing the momentum to reach her ankles then released in a sharp movement; leaping upwards and completing a rotation in the air, knees tucked to her chest them uncoiling gracefully so she could land lightly on her feet. This was a show of strength and control more than anything; she did not move laterally more than a step, meaning it would not adapt well to combat. Whatever mastery over her emotions she felt she lacked she channelled into her form. Mai and Azula both watched her. With each repetition Azula marveled that she did not have a springboard beneath her, rather than packed dry earth. In a quiet aside to Azula, Mai quietly said “She’s been like  _ this  _ for hours.” The acrobat was sensitive; often the unspoken tension that erupted between the three girls first broke when Ty Lee was in such a mood. Acting out served her well in her home, each of her sisters competing for attention, unlike the passive games that played out in Mai and Azula’s households. They were equal parts baffled and appreciative of her frankness, which sometimes brought to light what all three were feeling. _

_ Ty Lee, sensing eyes were on her, stumbled her last landing. When she saw Azula was watching by the campfire, she rushed over. Searching her friend’s face, she tentatively asked, “how is the planning going?” to which Azula merely shook her head. The acrobat fidgeted, unsure of what to say next. The highly strung atmosphere of the campsite seemed more than she could bear. And it made Azula deeply uncomfortable. Seeing Mai would not come to her aid, Azula rolled her eyes. At times like this Azula wondered if she were not of Earth Kingdom heritage, as passive and unmoveable as she could be. _

_ “Ty Lee, I want to go for a walk.” _

_ Immediately, Ty Lee bounced to attention, seemingly relieved to be told what to do. Once they were cleared the opening to the campsite, Azula indicated that Ty Lee should lead the way.  _

_ “I just want to clear my head.” _

_ Ty Lee nodded sagely, far more relaxed now they were moving. “I didn’t want to say anything but the energy near our camp is very … hmm thick?” She frowned, thinking hard. _

_ “Tense?” Azula offered. _

_ “Yes!”  _

_ She could not have sounded further from tense if she tried. Azula never quite knew what to make of Ty Lee’s infatuation with superstition. Although the acrobat was intuitive enough that her insights proved useful, so Azula indulged her. It did not take sensitivity to spiritual energies to tell that the three friends had been dealt a blow from the destruction of the drill, and the distant rage of the Firelord bearing down most heavily on their leader could be felt even from here.  _

_ “What did you do, back when you were with the circus, before a big show?” _

_ “Oh. Well I would train a lot. Practise until I was perfect,” she said, looking up in thought. Azula waited for her to continue. “And then if that didn’t help, I would go to the animal tent and sit with the platypus bears and the lion vultures and sometimes I would visit the monkey parrots, but only sometimes, because they liked to throw things at visitors,” she said, crinkling her nose. What a strange girl she was, at home with such creatures.Ty Lee saw that Azula had a face of slight disgust at the thought of the monkey parrots that matched hers and broke out in a smile, eyes watery. “I don’t think we’ll find anything like that out here,” she said softly. But by then, Azula didn’t feel they needed to. It was enough just to go for a walk with her friend, and forget about the days to come. _

Her duties had always meant she stood alone, even amongst friends. Now, without the familiar weight of responsibilities she felt cut loose, with nothing to cling to but her memories and nightmares. Wanting to close that distance that now threatened to overwhelm her, she changed the topic. 

“So what exactly will you have me do on this farm of yours?”

“Two of the four fields have been harvested already. We need to clear the land of debris to prepare it for when we sow the crops for the next season.” Yang scrunched up her face. “Normally we’d be able to hire a few benders to help us out but…” she scratched at the back of her neck, “...it hasn’t been a good year for us.” The wind whipping at their backs explained why the farmers couldn’t simply conduct their own burns. The whole countryside could be burnt to the ground. “It’s hard work. But it will be easier with two people.” Azula had thought the fields were ripe with bounty. She saw no reason why Yang’s family would be struggling. As if Yang had read her mind, she explained: “with the war ended, there’s not as much demand. We produce as much as before but sell it for half as much.”

When the two arrived at the farm, it was past nightfall, and Azula could not make out the features of the fields she would be working on tomorrow. Yang showed the Princess to her accommodations. A barn. Most of it was packed with bales of livestock feed and sacks of grains, which filled the air with a grassy, earth scent. To the side on a raised platform of wood was a stretcher bed one and a deep wooden bucket. There was even a torch in a pitcher. Far homelier than the cave she had camped in the night before. Yang pointed out the water pump, from which she could draw her water. “For bathing,” she smirked pointedly. Which is exactly what Azula did, once Yang had left her. She warmed the water, bending the heat, and splashed it over herself, running it through her hair, and scrubbing weeks, days of dirt and sweat from her skin. Stripping off to her undergarments she hung her soiled clothes above the remnants of the bath, which she bent heat into until it boiled. The steam would at least lift some of the odour from them. 

As she was doing this Yang appeared again, with a tray of food: rice, stir fried greens, and a bowl of salty broth. She raised her eyebrows, not at Azula undressed before her, which she quickly moved to cover with crossed arms, but at the firebending she had used to heat the water. 

“I didn’t realise you were a bender,” she said, placing the tray down by Azula’s bed. Azula shrugged. 

“I was a soldier after all.” They stood in what Azula felt to be awkward silence. She hesitated, before saying, “I could help you with the burning. I’m quite good. I could control a small burn.” Yang looked overjoyed.

  
“Okay then. I’ll wake you in the morning. I hope you’re an early riser,” she said, and walked back towards the farm house.

Azula sat up long after she had finished her tray of food, flipping the mirror she had found at the ancestral shrine between her fingers. She had never found it easy to drift off to sleep, even at the best of times. The wind whistled through the cracks in the barn, but she wasn’t bothered by the cold. The bales of grass and feed rustled, and in the light from the torch above her head she saw a meadow vole, poke its head out. It crept forward, keeping to the shadows, until it was close enough to Azula’s tray of food. Its bonded pair, seeing its mate had found some food, crept after it, although far bolder than the first. They snuck tiny grains of rice, eating them quickly. The first one then dared to sneak a larger piece of carrot Azula had not eaten. Its pair hopped toward it, and chased it in circles before they ran back to the safety of the bales from where they came. The sounds of playful squeaks were almost enough to make Azula smile in spite of herself. Still, not wanting to attract vermin to her bed, she pushed the tray out the door of the barn. Tucking the mirror back into her basket, she settled into an uneasy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Princess turned farmer girl. At least she finally got her hot meal.
> 
> The little meadow vole at the end was inspired by a little mouse that has been sneaking around my kitchen late at night! 
> 
> I'm back studying now so chapter updates won't be as frequent, but we are nearing the final arc of Azula's adventure. I will also be trying to complete an azutara fic for one of the atla femslash 2020 prompts so stay tuned for more lesbian azula stories.
> 
> As always thanks for the kudos and the comments. Always makes my day. lmk what you think below and stay covid safe !


	8. All in a Day's Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula is put to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first half of a chapter that i decided to split up as it was getting way to big. enjoy

Azula couldn’t move. Legs as heavy as when she had been drugged at the Asylum, and her mind too clouded to sustain the effort of moving them. It was a cold, dark terror that made her shiver. The barn was dark, save for the slivers of moonlight through the gaps in the wood. But the darkness seemed to close in as if it were solid. She wanted to call out; the sound of her voice evidence that she was alive but found that she couldn’t. The words were trapped in her throat. She searched the darkness for any shape, any figure but could not trust her eyes. She felt again like the small child she had once been, seeing her Father appear in the gap of her Palace bedroom door, walking quietly to the foot of her bed. She closed her eyes, feigning sleep and praying he would be fooled. Now, in the barn, she lay still for what seemed to be both hours and seconds, punctuated only by a lonely bird call or the scurrying of meadow voles around her. She imagined how easy it would be for someone to slip into the barn and slit her throat, as she screamed a silent scream. Although in the Fire Nation, there was a tendency for more subtle means of assasination, all members of the Royal Family kept odd hours, for fear of being disappeared in the night. The habit stuck with her wherever she went. But she could never shake that creeping stillness that would bind her half to sleep.

Azula never exactly knew what had happened to her Mother or her Grandfather. It went unsaid, even between her and Zuko. But it was plain to see what awaited those who displeased her Father. She felt the ground beneath her could fall at any moment, with any misstep. She applied herself, as she did to any problem, to find the brilliant deference that allowed her his audience. And how intoxicating it was, to have the ear of the Firelord; if only she did not misspeak. It set her apart to have the favour of her Father. Any failure to enact his will, however, and his retribution was absolute. The mark her Brother carried was a stark reminder of what she was spared from becoming. She used to pity him. Unable or unwilling to be the Prince he ought to have been. But then, he had never been interested in learning.

To defy her Father was unthinkable. But, in the lead-up to her downfall, she found a rift that she could not at the time reconcile. The impossible demands of what was being asked for threatened to split her in two.

_ Azula had called for Mai and Ty Lee to meet her in the Palace training grounds. The solar eclipse which would render the Fire Nation military near useless was only weeks away. The Princess had found herself locked in the baking hot war room for hours at a time. She sat by Ozai’s side, considering the strategising of the ancient generals and admirals. In honour of her role in securing the intelligence of the water tribe invasion, her Father had granted her a privileged role in the defence plan. _

_ “He wants  _ **_you_ ** _ to be his diversion?”  _

_ “When you have no bending?!’ _

_ Azula looked at her friends, Mai looking as skeptical as Ty Lee looked aghast. _

_ “I guess there is no one else he would trust to pull this kind of plan off. And you know I’m the only one the old Avatar’s circle of friends would be fooled by.” _

_ Ty Lee bit her lip and exchanged a glance with Mai, causing Azula to prickle. _

_ “If you doubt my abilities, or my Father’s judgement, then I beg you to watch your tongue.” _

_ When that was met with silence, Azula paused, aware of the stirring in her stomach. Their concerns had good reason. While Azula was the greatest firebender of her generation, her gruelling training had come at the expense of more general hand-to-hand combat skills. For the eight minute duration of the eclipse she would be vulnerable, and completely alone. In a softer voice, she said “But I have asked you here for a reason.” She turned her proud head so she would not have to look them straight on. “You are both fine non-bending fighters. Can you help me?” _

_ They trained evasive maneuvers for hours. Mai threw projectiles for Azula to dodge, while Ty Lee instructed her on leaps and flips that confounded earth and water benders, her most likely opponents. She had never been without her bending before. To fight without her bending was a confronting prospect. Under normal circumstances the constant offence of her fire intimidated her foes. Her own projection of fearlessness was therefore crucial. _

_ “Mai! Throw those knives like you actually want to hit me.” She had to train any hint of hesitation out of herself. _

_ When she was unpinned from the ground for the final time, the crease between Ty Lee’s brows wobbled, threatening to break the dam she had so far held while Mai looked on. The worry was catching, sparking something inside her that she was desperately avoiding. Ty Lee’s open, obliging face mirrored her own heart.  _

_ Her eyes flashed. “Ty Lee. Go.” _

_ Azula seethed, rigid in place, as her wounded friend left the training grounds. Mai, however, remained. She measured her words, the picture of caution. Even the flatness of her tone could not mask that. _

_ “She doesn’t want you to get hurt.” _

_ Azula’s jaw was set, holding a hundred unspoken words back. _

_ Mai tried again. “We have both been instructed to escort the other counsellors out of Caldera.” _

_ Azula exhaled through her nose and rolled her eyes. But she picked up the threads of what Mai was suggesting, however indirectly. The Princess would need assistance. She composed her face into something approximating coolness; if anything, Mai could be counted on to not bring attention to the moments where she lost her composure. _

_ “There is the Dai Li I suppose. I could speak to my Father about involving them as a contingency plan. In case things get… out of hand.” _

_ “Whatever you think, Azula.” Mai turned in the direction Ty Lee had left in, and Azula dismissed her with a wave of her hand. Before she left, Mai said, “She cares about you, Princess,” an Azula almost thought she heard the hint of a warning in her words. _

The ghosts of that rift rose in her just now, and she found she could move her hands to cover her eyes as she lay in the stretcher bed in the barn. Through the gaps in her fingers she watched the moonlight progress across the barn floor, lost in thought. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before dawn Yang knocked on the door with a small pot of tea and a bowl of congee. Searching Azula’s face, she said “You didn’t sleep? Did the boar-q-pine get in?” Unimpressed, Azula did not respond, taking a sip of the tea instead with the slightest rise of her eyebrows. She had, in fact, slept terribly, and was not looking forward to the day. As welcoming as this opportunity had appeared the day before, she was coming to regret accepting the offer. She took a sip of the tea. Not as good as her Uncle’s tea, although she would never tell him. But it warmed her inside out, chasing the chill from her fingers and toes. The congee too was steaming hot. A simple meal, nothing but spring onions on top, but, like the tea, it readied her to face the day. Now feeling less peevish, she conceded that there was no point to being rude to the farmer girl. So Azula said to Yang, “I’m normally more of a morning person.”

“It’s hardly morning yet. The sun won’t be up for a little while yet. C’mon. Get dressed and come help me clean this stuff up,” she said, gesturing to the emptied bowls and cup. When Yang closed the door behind her Azula scowled.  _ I guess I’m not the only one who slept poorly then. _

The girls walked together towards the main house, where a bucket was set up next to a small fire. An older man, beginning to go grey, stood with a long smoking pipe in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He did not greet them until Yang introduced Azula to him, “this is my Uncle, Xian. Uncle, this is Hana,” using the false name Azula had decided upon weeks ago. He drained the tea in one final swig and held the empty cup out to her. She pulled a face, looking into the dirty cup, and back up at Xian, confused. He pushed it into her hand and nodded to Yang, who bent over the bucket now filled with dirty dishes. 

“Help her.”

Azula took a sharp intake of breath. The thought of immersing her hands in dirty water swimming with loose grains of rice was enough to make her skin curl. And the nerve of the man, treating her like some common servant. It was a good thing he had moved away from her, for the heat radiating from her body might have singed the fine black hairs from his upper lip. Her thoughts were interrupted by Yang, clearing her throat. She looked up at Azula, and seeing her reluctance, said “You can dry these with this,” throwing her a towel. “But  _ don’t _ use firebending. They’ll crack.” Azula rolled her eyes, but set about drying the ceramic cups and bowls with the old rag, knowing she would have tried using firebending if not instructed otherwise. Not that Yang needed to know that.

By now the first glimpse of sunlight peeked over the horizon. The Princess and the farmer girl walked out in the direction of the sun to the already harvested fields, while Xian went to the fields filled with vegetables to be harvested, to be later joined by Yang’s brothers. Along the crude dirt path along the fields, Yang pushed a primitive looking wheelbarrow, piled with tools they would be using for the day’s work. In the light of day, Azula saw signs of the financial struggle Yang had referred to the day before. Although the fields had been bountiful, the fences were in need of repair and there were broken tools scattered along the path. Looking over her shoulder towards the barn in which she had slept, from the outside it too looked in need of repair. Looking at her companion, she saw her clothes, while cleaner than hers, were tattered and she appeared to have outgrown them.

“This farm looks like it has seen better days.”

“I told you yesterday. Everything we grow is selling for less than before.” She sighed and after a moment said, “I don’t know what we are going to do.”

“You don’t have a plan?”

“My Dad and Uncle have been speaking to the Ushi clan. We might sell them some of our land. I’m not sure we can survive otherwise.”

Azula narrowed her eyes and looked thoughtful. Back at the Capital, the day-to-day lives of the citizens of the Fire Nation had never been of much importance to her. Her interest lay in military exploits and in maintaining the balance of power in the court. Land, resources, and political capital were the realm of the Fire Lord, with the mundane running the Nation’s populace falling to the bureaucrats and civil servants of Caldera City. She supposed that with the end of the 100 year war, the Fire Lord might answer to the returned soldiers, purposeless and embittered, the angry Nobles whose clans serviced the military, and the people - peasants, merchants, labourers whose livelihoods had been upended by the sudden end to the war. 

If there were ever a Fire Lord who could champion people like Yang and her family, it would be Zuko. The last time they had been allies, before his betrayal of their Father, he spoke occasionally of his time among the common people of the Earth Kingdom. Not that he had the political sense to be able to achieve the reform that would be needed.  _ You would think he wished he had never stopped serving commoners in Uncle’s tea shop.  _ At the time she thought it was simply that he mourned his relationship with Iroh, as their Uncle rotted in a jail cell. But then, when he turned against their Father, Azula did wonder whether the scorched earth strategy against the Earth Kingdom had played a role. Was he thinking of the starving peasants he had lived amongst when he thought of the Phoenix King, reigning down a sea of fire? To Azula, that had been in the abstract; she had barely given them a second thought, consumed with the desire to please her Father. If a man like Xian had been brought before her then she would happily burn his farm to the ground.

Her train of thought was brought suddenly to an end. They had arrived at their place of work. In the early morning light she saw the harvested field covered in severed shoots of wheat. In the area furthest from the path they walked along was untilled land, covered in scrub and an ancient tree. There were deep indentations in the fields from where a hippo-ox had dragged a crude mechanical reaper behind, churning the soil and unearthing rocks and stones beneath the ground. Even to Azula’s untrained eye, it was clear that, beyond the sowing and reaping of the wheat, the maintenance of the land had been neglected. It was no wonder Yang had offered her the job rather than turn her over to the guards; petty spite was worth far less than a pair of hands to put to work.

Yang turned the wheelbarrow over to Azula, walking in front as they trod across the field. As she walked, she showed Azula how to use the various tools to hack through shots of wheat that had evaded harvesting, or to dig out unearthed roots of stones that could damage a hand tiller. The wheel barrow became steadily heavier, as Yang filled it with these items. It was not long before Azula’s brow was beaded with sweat despite her breathing exercises to regulate her heat. Prior to her incarceration in the Asylum, her daily training had involved holding the fundamental firebending stances while bearing heavy weights under the watchful eyes of Lo and Li while they critiqued her form. Since being on the road and lacking a reliable source of sustenance and weights, Azula’s training had been restricted to resistance free exercises. As such, her form was poor and her ability to bear the weight of the wheelbarrow was negligible. Pushing the heavy wheelbarrow along uneven ground as the piles of stones and sticks grew higher was beyond her. When the handles slipped from her sweat slicked hands for the third time, Yang looked back at her, exasperated. Azula shrugged and pursed her lips. 

“Yang, swap with me. I’ll do whatever it is that you’re doing.”

Yang snorted and rolled her eyes.

“I thought you were a soldier. Don’t they make you train?”

“Not by pushing a wheelbarrow through mud,” she snapped back.

As they stepped past each other, Yang grabbed Azula’s hand.

“You’ve never worked a day in your life have you,” she said, looking at Azula’s hand, unblemished, with soft, uncalloused skin. 

The Princess withdrew her hand with a start. 

“Give me that,” she said, and snatched the pick that Yang had been using to dig out stones from the ground. 

She had never taken kindly to criticism. Fuming, she took her anger out on the earth, all the more irritated with the obvious amusement of her companion. “At least Yang’s mood is improving,” she thought bitterly. While her back was soon aching from the angle at which she bent over the ground, she found herself using her upper body more. This exertion was more tolerable than the full body ache of the wheelbarrow, more similar to the upper body focus of her residual firebending training. They spent the day covering the fields, periodically walking the wheelbarrow back to the area they had first arrived where they separated the stones from the sticks and other flammable materials, and taking turns to dig and slash and to walk the heavy wheelbarrow in the other’s wake. The backbreaking work continued until evening, when Azula found her head spinning from hunger. She had not wanted to give Yang another reason to gloat, and so she refused to request breaks in addition to the short lunch they had eaten under the ancient tree. Both their faces were pink from exertion when Yang indicated they were to walk back to the house for lunch. A cold wind on their back cooled them down as they walked.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every muscle in Azula’s body ached. When she held her hand outstretched in front of her it trembled. The blisters and scratches covering her hands and feet a testament to her labour. 

Azula had excused herself to her space in the barn to wash, while Yang dutifully went to the kitchen with her Aunties to prepare dinner. By the time Azula reemerged, dinner was almost ready. She was spared the chore of trying to make conversation with Xian and Yang’s two brothers, already sitting and smoking around a dining table inside, by being ushered into the kitchen to help with the final flourishes of the meal. “Mum, Auntie, this is Hana,” Yang called out over the sizzling of meat and oil. The smell was very rich on Azula’s near empty stomach, and she just contained a grimace to nod politely at the older women, who asked her if she were hungry or something of that nature. She stood watching them all for a moment, unsure what she was expected to do. Yang’s mother was poking at what looked like dried smoked meat in a woke, while Auntie chatted to her, chopping mushrooms. She fought the urge to sit with Yang, conscious of the embarrassing notion that she had quickly grown dependent on her company in this foreign place. Food preparation had not been part of her schooling.

“Come help me with this,” Yang said, to Azula’s reluctant relief. She was stripping purple green leaves from the stems of a bunch of shiso. They were to be washed and sliced. She stared at the rising pile of shiso, waiting beside the knife. Tedious, and Azula lacked the knife skills of someone like, say Mai. Compared to that, how hard could picking leaves be? “I want to do that, Yang.” There was a thread of command in her voice that did not go unnoticed. It licked her belly, more certain than she was. And perhaps Yang felt it too, for she looked a little bemused. But she complied, more out of kindness than coercion. Azula would have felt better if she just refused.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The food was fine. The conversation was lively, but not for Azula of course. These people were beneath her and she had nothing to say to them, or so she told herself. But she felt her timidity, her ignorance of the affairs of these people acutely, and detested it. Well versed in watching and waiting, she listened. While her Auntie and Mother had an animated discussion about some town affair, Yang was loose and laughing, slumped comfortably in her seat. She half yelled across the table at her Brothers, discussing at length the events of the day. What had been monotonous and draining to Azula apparently was of great importance to the farming family. They argued whether the untilled area should instead host livestock, for meat and milk or for work, or cleared and converted into more space for crops. They discussed the quality of the soil, what the weather patterns predicted about the upcoming season, and whether they would be ruined by flood in the summer. Having nothing to contribute, she stifled a yawn.

Xian noticed her disinterest. “Yang tells us you are a soldier. What brings you here?” he asked. She raised an eyebrow. “Obviously the Fire Nation is no longer at war. We could hardly stay in the Earth Kingdom, could we?” The sharp words didn’t hit their mark, for he pressed further. “That doesn’t explain what brought you to this part of the Island.” He spoke in a light tone, but Azula felt Yang shift beside her. “I was born in Lin, but I’ve been looking for work along the coast to save for a boat ticket.” The best way to tell a lie is to tell a half truth. Upon hearing the name of the Port town she had passed through not long after she had escaped Sunset Asylum, a flash of interest passed over his face. “Ah, Lin. Many of the sons from our village joined the corps there. Although now most have joined the Ushi clan.” Here he became despondent, “They hire our sons, and then buy us out. But what can you do?” 

  
Now _ that  _ was interesting. Returned soldiers, finding no role in the Imperial army were bolstering the private forces of former Clan powers, ways away from the Caldera Capital. But she did not have a chance to enquire further. With the night dragging on, and the dregs of their conversation finished, Xian retired, and the women set about cleaning before bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story really is blowing out. when i first had the idea to write this i thought it would be three chapters but it turns out writing in all the details is a lot more fun.
> 
> feedback/comments/thoughts etc are much appreciated. its been so lovely reading what you've thought so far <3
> 
> again, i will be updating slowly but steadily i hope. if all goes as planned there will be about another 3 chapters but knowing me it could be more.
> 
> and i do have some more relationship focused femslash pieces planned but they will be published after this fic is finished. turns out im a lot busier than i originally anticipated


	9. Phoenix King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> azula is bad at farming again. but make it femslash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the delay with posting. i was completely side tracked by writing a one shot for a tyzula modern au femslash prompt (check it out if you haven't already) and have been getting my ass kicked by life. hope the wait is worth it

The last week had been filled with more hard labour than Azula had ever completed before. And she was weak. So weak and clumsy like a child, spoken to in a kind and patronising tone, “try it this way,” or or worse yet, something to laugh at or be sent away to do some easy task. The work was not enjoyable, of course not. Azula was no stranger to hard work, but there was so little to be gained, just dirt and stone and mud pushed from place to place. And the easy tolerance of her sloppiness put her to shame. Yang would maybe shrug, shake her head, and if she were tired and squinting swear out of her eyes she might just tell Azula to call for her brothers or Uncle while she took a break. She would have preferred to be yelled at.

Azula, Yang, and Xian had finished early yesterday. They sat, eating dried fish by the piles of shrubs and stems they had cut from the earth.

“Show us what you can do,” Xian said between mouthfuls of fish. More than Yang, he was skeptical of her usefulness to the farm. Just another mouth to feed. Azula suspected the only reason they had kept her on was because she could bend fire, abysmal as her other skills were. But she had been coy about her bending. In a world of few dignities, she would not bend anything other than blue. That mastery over flame would not be lowered unless by necessity. But as the only fire bender of her generation to do such a thing, she was known across the nation, and across the seas for her blue fire. To bend then, would risk discovery. As a kitchen hand who refused most tasks, she would light the fuel under the wok by enclosing the kindling in her hand. It was like she was a novice again, turning twigs to embers under the watchful eyes of Lo and Li. The women in the kitchen would joke how lucky they were to have such a restrained and humble soldier at their beck and call, and she would clench her jaw so as not to snap.

She pulled the tarp covering the pile with an abrupt tug. As if she were marking a target, she circled the pile until it was between her and the farmers. And then, using her index and middle finger she swept her arm along the length of the pile. The blue was hidden from view, and quickly turned warm, and she pushed the front under the bottom layers of matter so the pile smouldered from inside out. Besides the precision, there was little impressive about the display, but she watched with vague satisfaction as the fire cracked anyway. Xian, however, hissed and shook his head at her.

“It’s too hot, girl. It will char the ground. Do it gently.”

She gave him a very dark look. Lectured on making a kindling fire by a man with fish still in his teeth? With all the grace that she had, she smothered the fire, drawing the chi through her fingers. If only for Yang, without whom she would still be stalking fields between patrols for missed vegetables, or eating roots from roadside plants.

“Gentle, gentle.”

His tone was so irritating it took all her strength not to engulf the whole field in flames. She swallowed it down, down, down, and felt the flames grow hot again.  _ Gentle, gentle. _ She tried again, drawing the heat from the flame, letting it pass through her, until the whole pile was thick with smoke. A soft wind stirred and blew the smoke towards Xian, making him cough. Serendipity at last. “Sorry about that Xian,” she said, while Xian turned away, squinting tears out of his eyes. Yang however climbed to her feet. “If we put a spit over here we could smoke the fish. We could open a market stall.” She nudged Azula’s shoulder. “You would be the smoke chef!” The farmer girl found the most inane things amusing, and half the time Azula did not bother replying. But she imagined it for a moment. The preposterous image of her, in a dark kitchen smoking meat on a spit in some backwater village. The terrible sinking in her heart told her that might be the most she could make of herself, with all that had happened.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azula had always been afraid of fog. Something about not being able to see what was around her played into childhood nightmares she had long since forgotten. Cloying wetness in her mouth, her lungs, clinging to her hair like she had woken from a fever. 

In the Capital, the fog hung the heaviest in early Autumn. Nights turned cool, and by morning the basin would be obscured, even from Azula’s palace window to the grounds below. She would hate waking up to that sight, knowing she would soon be at the training grounds warding off targets she could barely see. With her fire weakened, she would be drilled again and again until finally, her form and accuracy was sufficient to grant her breakfast, which she would eat, nauseated and shaking from hunger. Sometimes she dreamed of it. The same forms over and over, coaxing out more from her body as hollow and slow as it felt in sleep. She would wake unrested, as if she really had been drilled in her sleep, and would find her form improved anyway. It was to the same sensation she woke up to that morning, fog creeping under the door to the barn, the same hollow feeling in her stomach even after she ate her meal with Yang and her brothers, the same stiff limbs walking to the edge of the property.

The sun rose, and the fog lifted, but she found her mind was absent, not listening to Yang and Xian, who had joined them today, not seeing the dirt and the mud, the ring of volcanoes extending beyond the horizon nor the blue of the ocean to the south. Yang and Xian did not pay mind to her silence for it happened often enough. Instead they spoke among themselves. Xian went between lecturing and bickering with her in equal measure. Instructing her how to mind Azula and make sure she did not burn the whole property down. They weren’t so different when they were together. Easygoing, mundane, Xian cuffing the back of her head when she showed too much cheek, her elbowing his side when he was overreaching. There was no room for undermining when so much effort went so little of the way just to sustain the little farm.

When they arrived in the field, Xian set about instructing her: Start here, go to that far end there, soft, slow, gentle or you’ll destroy the soil quality. Then he laughed, and slapped the top of her arm like he so often did with Yang. 

Azula walked out to the centre of the field, with Yang and Xian following behind. A light wind whipped over the land, bringing the smell of sea salt and manure. The princess faced her back to her supervisors and, with a deep intake of breath, relaxed into a neutral firebending stance. Then she placed her hand on the ground, and sent five points of fire out from her fingertips, with just enough chi that the stalks of wheat would be able to sustain their own fire. From there she could simply will it along the paths she desired. Methodical criss-crossing across the fields, she sent thin lines of fire outwards, then swept over them, lightly blackening the harvest wheat until it curled over collapsing. There was a tightrope she walked, maintaining enough chi that the fire would not go out, with enough control that she would avoid a rebuke from Xian, or, when he left to work on the other fields, satisfied she was no barbarian, Yang.

It was relatively slow work. The fire burned cool, and the fibrous ground covering she was burning took time to break down. When she had blackened one square section of the field, she walked in the wake of her chosen front, and sent forth new lines, as far as she could bend them from a distance. It was unlike any other firebending she had done before. Rather than the short, intense bursts of combat firebending she had mastered, this was light and warm, an endurance of effort. With each breath of wind, she loosened control, allowing the flames to all but disappear, until they appeared again, burning hotter than before, leading her to smother their intensity so as to not char the soil below. She was their gentle guide, and became lost in the work.

Smoke billowed from the ground, leading Yang to hang back out of its path, content to simply watch from afar. As she slowly blackened the field, she could not help but think of another time, another place, when she had played a part in putting fire to farmland. Or rather, she had authored such a plan, only to be written out at the last moment. It seemed wise at the time. Of course, a scorched colony would bare no fruit, would prove only a burden on the wider Fire Nation. But that was not her concern. She always did what Dad wanted, that was her real gift, for all the bending training, for all the schemes, the strategy, for all the networking and manipulation, at the end of the day she could read him better than anyone, and had the willingness to be his right hand. He cut piece after piece out of her, and she willingly offered up her flesh until… Until she mistook consumption for valuing, reliance for care, and demand for need. A freefall into ice water. 

What would he think, seeing her here in the fields, a mockery of the one and only Phoenix King? She imagined him sitting on his prison cot like a throne. He would watch her, no less menacing for his stolen bending than before. Fire is only one teacher, brutal and blunt as its recipient. Her teacher was far more insidious, lingering fears and an ever looming threat: she took to it like a needle to thread. She made it part of her, darning over the missing pieces that ached. It was easy to be myopic; a hair here, a moment's hesitation, the perfect form, the slightest inconsistency, the smallest trace of subordination, the hidden opportunities that others missed. For all those subtleties it wasn’t enough, and she was less than the dirt at her feet. The memories flashed before her, disjointed and confused, a little window into something she was not aware she had remembered before it disappeared from mind again. Hot, wet tears dripped down her face only to turn into salt and steam. She felt herself unraveling again, felt the heat rise, felt the breath falter.

_ Gentle, gentle. _

She drew the heat from the flames, passing it through her heart and to her stomach. Gentleness did not come naturally to her, but rather with the sour feeling of shame. Gentle moments hidden away like crimes, hidden from herself as much as anyone else. Gentleness that hit like a blow.

_ Azula had spent the last few days wracking her brain for what signs there had been of Zuko’s betrayal. He had always been moody, always been quick tempered, always been insecure and easily baited. And he had never trusted her, nor sought out her company, so there was nothing new there. Mai had not been able to pacify his foul irritability, neither had Father’s good graces, nor Azula’s attempts at an olive branch. He had always been soft- too soft willed and self indulgent to take seriously his responsibilities to the throne. So he skirted his duties to all but the whims of his heart. The responsibility fell on her, as it so often did, to correct his mistakes. And with the fury of the Fire Lord at her back, she would not make the error of offering her Brother the benefit of the doubt again.  _

_ Her first step was to interrogate her friends as to whether they had an inkling of Zuko’s treacherous desertion. Ty Lee she could trust, but Mai had grown distant since their return from the Earth Kingdom. What had seemed like benign preoccupation with her Brother’s return now took on a sinister quality. So she had sent Ty Lee to speak to her, and perceptive as she was, Azula was confident dishonesty on Mai’s part would be found out. Before she had left, Ty Lee had bit her lip, “Do you really think Mai would keep something like that from you?” With ugly old doubts rising in her, Azula had sent her on her way without answering.  _

_ She was leaning on the desk in her private study when Ty Lee knocked on the door with a rhythmic tap that could only be made by her. Despite the strain she was feeling, Azula could not help but suppress a smile at the sound. She steeled herself for Ty Lee’s report before calling her in. Ty Lee slipped into the room with light feet, quickly looked around for listeners before approaching Azula. She had a concerned expression, although the little crease between her brows was no more visible than it had been recently. She looked at Azula with doleful eyes, and shook her head in response to Azula’s unasked question. So Mai did not know of Zuko’s treachery. _

_ “Are you sure?” _

_ Ty Lee nodded, her lips pressed together. “I’ve never seen her so upset, Azula.” _

_ Azula’s eyes were hard as she searched Ty Lee’s face. The acrobat was pale from tiredness. She seemed to have taken on as much pain as Mai had. It was a quality Azula didn’t understand. She seemed immune to have her aura clouded by other people’s energies, as Ty Lee would put it. Ty Lee was captive to them. _

_ “She showed me the letter he left her. That was all she knew of it.” _

_ Azula had seen the letter already. She flicked at her nails, thinking. _

_ “They could have easily planned the letter beforehand, to take suspicion off of her. It doesn’t mean much.” _

_ “Zula,” Ty Lee implored. She was grasping at her own fingers, but her voice was clear. “I can’t say why, but I know she didn’t have any more idea that Zuko was going to leave than the rest of us. She just thought he was still... adjusting. She’s not keeping anything from you.” _

_ They stared at each other in all but silence, besides the sound of Ty Lee digging into the skin of her hands. Her eyes were wet but she made a determined pout. Azula looked for any crumble in her resolve, and finding none, she looked away first, breathing out a sigh she did not know she had been holding. Her head was swimming, and she clung onto the first thought that came to her. “Zula?" She would have thought it was a taunt had it not wormed a smile onto the corner of her lips. With the upheaval of Zuko's sudden desertion, and her Father’s wrath with no target other than her, it was a lifeline. Another day and she might have given sweet Ty Lee a curt rebuff. Today she let it cushion her. _

_ Realising she had not yet said anything, Azula straightened her hair and looked up at Ty Lee again. She was still clutching at her hands, rubbing at the skin. Nervousness. Better to dig your nails into your palm. Then it was harder for others to see. Azula took a rare moment of pity on her. She reached out and pulled Ty Lee’s hands apart, letting her thumbs linger on the red marks she had made. _

_ “If what you say is true, then we will need to follow up with the guards who were supposed to be watching my Uncle. That might be our best chance of finding both him and my idiot Brother.”  _

_ Ty Lee let out a sigh of relief. Whatever crisis she had been imagining was averted. Azula regarded her for a moment, before allowing them a coy smile to rise on her face. She cocked an eyebrow. “Apparently Uncle tore the iron bars apart during the eclipse.” _

_ “How is that even possible?! Your Uncle is so weird.” _

_ Azula shook her exasperated head. “Yes, he is.” She mused over exiling the warden responsible for his escape, then became serious once more. However welcome these moments of respite were, she was rattled, and looking to Ty Lee for a measure of certainty. _

_ “You’ll come with me to find them.”  _

_ She hated the whine that she had failed to disguise as an order. Perhaps Ty Lee heard it too, for she shifted her hands that, Azula realised, were still in hers. She was wanting without noticing, and she hated that too. Like she had been burnt, she released Ty Lee's hands. But instead of letting them fall apart, Ty Lee linked their fingers together, causing the Princess’ face to grow hot. She could see an eye lash that had fallen to her friend's cheek, the crease where her nose upturned, and the smattering of freckles on her nose that she hated, but Azula loved (not that she would ever say it). She brought her eyes back to Ty Lee’s, and felt an uncomfortable twinge. Ty Lee always saw where she was looking. Usually she did not bring any more attention to it than to perhaps smile, or sometimes to wink, as if they were sharing a joke. Today she showed Azula a reflection of herself. _

_ Azula turned her head away, abashed. In a more dismissive tone, she said “Mai will come too, of course.” _

_ “Of course, Zula.” _

_ Zula again. She had never wanted to be anyone's Zula before. It was unbecoming of a Princess. But Ty Lee had a way of making her come undone. Slowly at first. And now, all at once. It was easy to justify how her thoughts so often turned to Ty Lee when they were on a mission together. She had a team to command after all. Less so was the petty jealousy or the tumultuous feeling in her gut whenever she heard Ty Lee's sing-sing voice.  _

_ Azula did not know whether she loved or hated the way Ty Lee made her feel so exposed. But right now, with the way that Ty Lee had inched ever closer, it made her reckless with her testing. She assumed the most regal air she could muster. _

_ “But you’ve always been my favourite.”  _

_ Favourite what? It did not matter because it was true all the same. In place of the usual torrent of praise, Ty Lee went still while the words washed over her. Azula took a moment to smirk while pink flooded Ty Lee’s cheeks. She admired her wavy brown hair, her wide grey eyes. No wonder so many boys fell for her. She really was the prettiest thing. To be the cause of Ty Lee's fluster made Azula's heart ache. _

_ She seemed in a daze, her hands limp but for her fingers still linked with Azula's. Had Ty Lee ever been anyone's favourite before? When she complained about being forgotten among her sisters, Azula had not gotten the impression she ever had been. It was a simple thing to grant her. Ty Lee had already forced her heart. _

_ Ty Lee blinked and seemed to come back to her senses, and it made Azula shy. It was all she could to look away, to stare at the curve of Ty Lee's elbow. She could feel Ty Lee sizing her up. What do you see, Ty Lee?  _

_ She hesitated. Then, not taking her hands from Azula’s,Ty Lee stood on her tippy toes and leant forward. With all the grace of a circus acrobat, she brushed her lips on Azula’s cheek. It tickled there, and where her brown hair grazed the Princess’ skin. She hovered for a moment, balancing easily on her toes, before leaning back again, standing even closer than before. They had both forgotten to breathe. _

_ “Again…” _

_ There was no need for any hardness to her voice. Ty Lee leant over again, this time to Azula’s other cheek. She kissed this one too, although more firmly, and had paused again. Azula tilted her chin just slightly towards Ty Lee’s, and when she raised her eyes to Ty Lee’s, she found they were dark like liquid. They were closer than they had ever been, but this last step was the largest. She felt frozen. To be found out now, in the arms of her friend, would be the end of her life as she knew it. Azula shut her eyes, and Ty Lee kissed her.  _

When she opened her eyes she was surrounded by fields on fire once again. Not smouldering, smoking embers burning gently. Fierce blue fire. She had lost herself, and lost her steady grip over her element and the fire had spread far beyond the neat paths she had walked with it. She fought back panic for a moment, wiping smoke and tears from her eyes, praying she would get a hold of herself.  _ Breathe. _ Firebending came from the breath, and her breathing was erratic. But forcing stillness on her mind only made her choke. She tried again, with shaking hands to press down on the fire, move the chi through to her stomach. In the scope of her brutal training this was childsplay. So why was it so hard now?

“Hana!”

Azula snapped to attention. Yang had run across the field, rolling along with her a large barrel. A barrel. Full of water. To put out a fire that Azula could not. It would be comical if it were not so pathetic. Not wanting to face the shame of such an outcome Azula renewed her attempts. But when she had successfully smothered a section of the fire, a cold wind would whip it ablaze again. Overcome, she kicked her leg in frustration, slicing a wave of fire into the air. 

“Hana?”

Yang had reached her side. She was out of breath from running. Her face was red from the exertion, and her expression changed to dawning horror as she put two and two together. “Blue?” She had seen the wanted posters in the market. And now there was an enraged veteren soldier burning down her fields with blue flame.

“Princess Azula?” Hearing her name at such a time, in such a place was beyond her comprehension. She barely reacted as Yang pulled her back from the fire, nor stepped out of the way as Yang opened the barrel, allowing water to gush out over the flames nearest to them. It was only when Yang, satisfied they were not at immediate risk from the fire, dropped to the ground in a deep kowtow. The stunning wrongness of it hit her all at once. 

Azula raised her hand and bent a wicked flame. She wanted the dirt, the fire, the farmer girl bowing before her out of her sight. It would be so easy to destroy her whole life, and her knowledge that she had hosted royalty, then and there. She would not even know it. Another cold wind blew the smoke back in her eyes.

_ Gentle, gentle. _

Azula turned away from Yang and her overturned barrel.  _ Breathe.  _ With a look of distaste, the Princess stepped through the ashy mud to the wheat stems still burning.  _ Breathe.  _ She tried again to pull the heat from the flames, drawing it through herself with each intake of breath. She did it over and over for each patch of land. Active flames spluttered and sparked, but she continued until even the embers went out. By the time she completed the process for all the uncontrolled fire Yang had sat up to watch her.

Azula marched up to the farmer girl. Yang shuffled backwards as Azula approached and refused to catch her eye. But Azula held her hand out, and when Yang did not grasp it, she huffed, “get up.” Pulling her to her feet, Azula looked her squarely in the eye. Her face was marred with ash and salt but her eyes were fierce.

“Do not tell anyone what you saw.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all i can say for azula is ouch :'(
> 
> so ive been a bit vague abt the plans for this story, but there seems to be enough interest for me to continue azula's redemption beyond the "azula alone" part. so there are a couple of chapters of this story left, but i will be working on the next part once it is finished!
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked. i love to know what parts of the story and characters resonate and what you would like me to focus on. your feedback has helped me to refine this story as i've been writing it and it is so encouraging , it makes all the effort of writing worth it.
> 
> also lil easter egg - if you go back to the very first paragraph of the very first chapter, that takes place between this chapter and the next :)


	10. Cycles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> endings and beginnings

_ It was a trick gone wrong. Sullen-faced and irritated, the Princess Azula stormed out to a quiet corner of the Palace gardens. Her little body held as much of her virulent fury as it possibly could before her face blotched red because of some forgotten inconvenience. She did not scream, for she did not want some troublesome servant to sweep her off to her Amah. This was the private ritual of a child’s rage. And before she knew it, the ornamental pear tree had caught on fire. At first she watched its delicate bark blacken and curl, and felt righteous. But then, what was her small spark grew to consume the lower branches, climbing higher to the crown of the little pear tree. This was something she could not undo. So she ran to her bedroom and pretended she had never been in the garden at all. She even skirted the walls behind the unscalable shrubs, hoping that if she could not see the staff of the grounds, maybe they would not see what she had done. _

_ In her room she carefully arranged the dolls, the wooden fish, the toy war drum across the floor, as if they had been discarded there during play. It was maybe an hour she sat there, immobilised by nauseating waiting, and she had begun to relax again when the door to her bedroom was opened. No one would open a door that way if they did not know what was waiting inside. She had been found out, worst of all by her mother, fond as she was of the ornamental pear tree. Mother was always so quiet, like she had bound her feet in cotton so as to disappear into the walls. Her voice carried, although it was barely above a whisper. _

_ “Azula did you burn the pear tree?” _

_ But the little Princess did not look up at her Mother. She just frowned and prodded the porcelain face of the doll in her hand.  _

_ “Azula, answer me.” _

_ Her frown only deepened, but she realised she would have to say something. She turned away from her Mother and twisted the head of the doll. She made a whine that was muffled by clenched teeth. The whine that turned into a squeal when she was pulled to her feet by a firm hand under her arm. _

_ “I didn’t do it!” _

_ And in reply she felt a sharp slap to her cheek. Just enough force that it left a sting. But it was the loudness of it that shocked Azula. There was a moment of silence between them, something shared and something intimate, before Azula started to cry. _

_ Her Mother never hit her again. Perhaps she felt guilty. But the Princess never forgot the sound. _

Azula was reeling. The farmland around her was flooded with blackened mud, and a large plume of smoke rose into the air above cast the sun in orange and red light. The sights and smells were nothing new, but the sickening loss of composure was, barring a few equally disturbing occasions. The chiding voice of Xian entered her mind, the rough pat on her shoulder. The fleeting looks of wordless horror directed at her from Yang. Not even an hour ago she had regarded her as some kind of simpleton, and now? Like she was a frightful animal that might turn on her yet. That almost did. The most important person she had ever laid her eyes on was Yumi, matriarch of the market, or maybe an Ushi village leader in this backwater region. Azula did not know what the general citizens of the Fire Nation knew of her decline, but any fool looking at her would see a mad princess from a child’s nightmare. Or perhaps Yang’s mortification was at her own behaviour, the easy teasing, the prodding, the wordless dismissals when the trouble of instructing her proved too much. Knowing now who Azula was and what she might do if not for her hastily recovered restraint.

She could not stay here. Not with this family. Not on this farm. Not after this. Yang could barely look at her. How could she trust her not to say what she had seen? And what use was she here? An overextension of Yang’s family’s charity was not something she expected nor wanted. She left Yang, still standing where Azula had pulled her to her feet, and walked to the barn. Whatever possessions she had to her name were there. She had barely left the field to walk along the dirt path when she noticed Yang following her with uncertain footsteps. The girl would not look or talk to her but she would trail behind her. So be it.

Azula reached the barn and began to collect her items to put into her basket. They were miserably few. The golden clip from her hair at the Asylum and the mirror that she stashed beneath the cot, an opened clay jar of pickled fish (stolen from the kitchen one evening), and sack of coins almost empty, and a small blanket, gifted to her by one of Yang’s Aunties for when the nights grew cold. It was just these and the clothes on her back. She looked around the barn, with its stacks of vermin infested feed, the gaps in the wooden boards, the little cot she slept on, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She only opened her eyes when she heard Yang open the door.

“Hana?”

Yang’s voice was so tentative that Azula could not face her.

“Princess Azula?”

The words sounded clumsy in her mouth. Like she couldn’t quite believe them.

“What did I tell you? Don’t call me that!” she hissed, but it came out garbled. 

“Where are you going?”

A day before, Xian had told her a story as he smoked his last pipe for the evening. A working dog from a nearby property that he had found curled up under his bed. It had been bitten by a weasel snake. This was where she had crawled to bleed.

“I’m not staying here any longer.”

Yang looked between Azula and her sad little basket, and appeared to be thinking fast.

“Wait here, please, Princess.”

Yang had never been trained in the etiquette of the court. There was an instinctual fear, and shocking deference in her manner. But failing to grasp the rigorously schooled decorum of addressing royalty, Yang fell back on what she knew of Hana: naivety and foolishness disguised as bite. And Azula waited, out of whatever sense of shame-faced obligation she owed the farmer girl.

Yang returned to the barn after enough time that Azula had become suspicious that the farmer girl might arrive with a group of soldiers ready to drag her off to the asylum again. But she arrived alone, save for the bundle of red fabric in her arms. Azula watched wordlessly as she unfolded the fabric. Thick straps of meat, dried over the fireplace in the kitchen. A cloth sack with a few pieces of bronze. And the fabric, she realised, was a set of clothes: loose fitting pants and a tapered shirt. Yang’s own clothes, judging by the size and the fit. Something inside her threatened to break but she bit down into that feeling and drew Yang into a hug. 

“I’m sorry.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azula walked along the road alone, her sugegasa pushed low upon her brow, but in borrowed clothes freely given. At last she came to the bend in the road she was expecting. A detour to the south, right along the coast. When sand turned to rock pools she would find a bounty of shellfish that could be cooked in a clenched fist and eaten as she walked. Just one weeks walk to Yamatsu, the largest harbour town on the south of the main Fire Island. The last week that spurred her on.

She arrived at her destination on the day of the Festival of Lights. On every awning of Yamatsu, and strung across every street, were paper lanterns. Red, green, yellow, pink. During the day the effect of the lanterns was different. The colour of the paper caught the eye, not washed out by the candle inside. There were paper puppets too, blowing in the wind, of dragons and fish. It would have been whimsical, if only they succeeded in papering over the ruin of the harbour town. There were few, if any, Imperial soldiers who might have once overflowed from the bars and stalls on every street corner. Dock workers sat smoking in doorways, playing pai sho instead of packing food, livestock, and fabrics onto ships set for the Southern Sea, or east to the Earth Kingdom colonies. The air was stagnant with decline; the hopelessness of lost pride.

Azula passed quickly through the streets, just another hungry soul on the road. She didn’t linger until she came across the main square, at the centre of which was a pagoda. A wooden structure, painted red and gold, a few stories high. In keeping with the festival spirit, dried flowers, sticks of incense and bowls of offerings were laid out in all directions. However, unlike in the Capital, tributes were mainly perishables, not gold and silver. But the prayers would likely be the same. Prosperity, love, health, wisdom. 

What caught Azula’s eye was not the piles of offerings, but rather the statuette, carved out of cherrywood. The latest patriarch of the Fire Nation. Fire Lord Ozai. Gone, but not forgotten. Sozin’s dynasty had made its mark on this pagoda. Sozin himself was carved on the back wall, the Father of modernity. Azulon, the Fire Lord who oversaw the expansion into the Earth Kingdom and the raids of the South. And Ozai, who ruled over Omashu and Ba Sing Se, and almost brought their Eastern neighbours under his heel. Zuko was absent. Zuko, who would throw it all away. Zuko, who usurped his Father and threw his sister in an Asylum, where she would be rotting to this day if it were not for his ill-conceived mercy. Zuko, who once ran through the halls of the Palace with her, laughing with her and falling for her tricks. Zuko who always got in over his head but still fumbled to his feet. There was no place for him at this pagoda.

The waterfront was vast. Expanded in the time of Azulon, the docks were built to support the service ships for the naval outposts into the Southern Sea. But the dry docks for ship repair were empty and unused. The quay was busier. Livestock, mainly hippo-cows, stood in pens waiting to be loaded for transport, along with barrels and containers of produce. Bound for destinations within the Fire Nation as well as abroad. Azula approached a man by a vessel being loaded with crates of eggplant. He wore the uniform of a civilian ship captain. 

“I’m looking for passage to the Earth Kingdom.”

The captain did not spare her a glance. He was focused on updating the papers before him, one brushstroke for each crate loaded onto the ship. “We aren’t a passenger vessel.”

The Princess was not dissuaded. “I have experience on every battleship line made in the last 5 years. I would be  _ invaluable _ to your crew.”

The captain scoffed at that. He actually turned his head to her now, with a derisive look in his eye.

“You and every other person in this Yamatsu,” he gestured back at the dockworkers huddled in restless groups along the quay. “Besides, this isn’t a military vessel.”

The man had no more to say to her, and returned to his papers. Azula felt the smirk fall off her face. She did not have the money for a ticket on any passenger vessel, and judging by the number of aimless men walking the docks, there was no demand for a shiphand. Azula could have kicked herself. All her reasoning, her plans, depended on information on this region she had gleaned in the war years, or from throwaway remarks she heard on the road. What was a few days or weeks mopping floors, or shoveling coal into an engine? Apparently an opportunity she had had underestimated the rarity of. And with no friends or allies to get her out of this province, she fought off panic. It was easier to think if she walked, so that she did, scanning the docks for an idea. 

Azula was walking between towering crates on the far side of the quay when she came across a farmer guiding a pair of hippo-oxen and the large wagon of hay through the narrow passage. The farmer didn’t look at her, but just spoke quietly to his animals, tapping their sides to direct them, rather than using the lead rope. The bales of hay were tightly packed onto a wooden support, but beneath the tarp she spied gaps in their arrangement. She remembered the little meadow voles that sheltered in the feed in the barn, only to come out at night to steal what fun they could while she slept.

“Old man, wait,” she called out to the farmer. “Is this wagon bound for the cargo ship at the end of the quay?”

The farmer turned to her, quite surprised to be addressed in such a way. But seeing the pouch of coins she held out in her palm, he nodded. She refused to be stuck in this miserable, dying town, the captain be damned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so we reach the end of "all that remains is smoke" aka the end of the azula alone portion of this redemption series. i was originally planning for this to be a standalone story, and it kind of is, but obviously with the last half of the chapter you can see azula's story will continue into the earth kingdom and beyond. 
> 
> subscribe to/keep an eye out for my "as a whole" series to get updates on the next part of azula's story, which i will be updating as usual. it'll be a slightly different tone w a focus on azula still trying to figure out her life but with a delicious dose of fire nation political intrigue and her attempts to repair her relationships w the people from her life as a princess (annoying brothers and circus acrobats included).
> 
> shout out to AO3 user spacemagic for the inspiration for the ursa azula flashback in the beginning of this chapter. check out her story The Tragedy of Lady Noriko for an amazing insight into ursa and the royal fire family drama.
> 
> as always lmk if you enjoyed and thanks for all the comments and feedback for this story. lots of love x
> 
> p.s. i know i said there were two chapters left but im terrible and decided to condense it into one and work on the next part of the series instead sorry

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @[azuwulastan](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/azuwulastan) for writing updates and atla bullshit posting


End file.
